The badgered mistake

Published 7:26 pm Thursday, February 21, 2013

To the editor:

In my letter of Feb. 15 I correctly wrote beavers the first time and incorrectly used “badgers” the next time. On Feb. 20 the two writers for changing our “no trapping on another person’s land even with their permission law” were nice enough to point out by kidding me that we do not have badgers in North Carolina.

Now, being curious, I googled it and was surprised to find from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “Any of various burrowing mammals of the weasel family that are widely distributed in North America.” I could not believe my eyes. Could I have been mistakenly correct? I decided to search further and found on Wiki Answers:

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“There are American Badgers found from western N.C. to central N.C.”

I feel I cannot take credit but just got lucky. If they are correct do you folks think that the weasels are lucky or smart enough to know the traps are just for beavers and coyotes and not badgers?

– Stan Mazur, Mill Spring