(A quick warning:  if you prefer to focus on the bright side of wildlife watching, consider skipping this post.)

A painful-to-digest truth about Mother Nature is that she’s every bit as merciless as she is beautiful, two sides of a fathomless coin.  This August offered an unwelcome reminder.  One day I was marveling at the way Great Gray Owls have been shaped by millions of years of evolution into a miraculous blend of form and function, and the next day I was watching helplessly as a sick badger, the mother of two cubs, suffered through the final hours of her life.

 

 

An increasing amount of evidence accumulated throughout August that Canine Distemper Virus might be burning through the badgers in Yellowstone’s eastern Lamar Valley.  CDV is a highly contagious disease that infects canines, mustelids (badgers, weasels, otters, wolverines, etc.), and many other carnivores.  Major CDV outbreaks hit Yellowstone’s wolves in 1999, 2005, and 2008, and CDV is suspected of killing all the Junction Butte wolf pack’s pups in 2025.  The impact of the virus on the park’s less-studied animals – like badgers – is not well understood.

August started out pleasantly enough.  On several mornings I found the Lone Cub family, two of my favorite badgers, and both looked healthy and happy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also encountered a badger I’d never seen before (the 24th different one this year!), possibly a cub off on its own for the first time.  And one morning I watched what I think was courtship behavior, with Single Adult 4 following Twins 2 Mom around for over an hour.  Twins 2 Mom, apparently unimpressed, had to chase off her would-be suitor multiple times before he took the hint.

 

 

Trout Lake, of course, never disappoints.  The light and clouds are always different, and on two mornings I was lucky enough to see a cow moose swim from one side of the lake to the other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As expected, the Uinta ground squirrels in Lamar Valley began hibernating in mid-August, and by the end of the month they’d completely vanished.  With their primary prey sleeping underground and their cubs mostly grown, the badgers I’d been watching since spring became harder to find.

Mid-August was also when the badger scene took a dark turn.  On August 13th I noticed that Twins Mom had a crusty ring around her eyes and was acting lethargic, two signs of CDV.  Then on August 19th I saw Lone Cub with what appeared to be conjunctivitis as well.  The next morning I watched as Lone Cub Mom, also with crust ringing her eyes, began vomiting, which is another sign of CDV.  A few days later Lone Cub Mom vomited again, and sometimes an unusual shiver ran through her body, basically completing the checklist of CDV symptoms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jill and Greg, our friends and Silver Gate neighbors, joined me in Lamar Valley on August 21st (fully warned that the badger situation had become grim), and Jill spotted Twins Mom so motionless and ragged-looking that we weren’t sure she was alive.  Eventually we saw that she was still breathing, but the end was clearly near.

 

 

The next morning I found Twins Mom in the same spot, dead.  I’ve read that the CDV mortality rate among badgers is close to 100%.  It now seemed likely to me that Triplet Mom, the badger I found dying in July, had also suffered from CDV.  For every dead badger above ground, how many were there below?

Thankfully there were still bright moments in the second half of August.  Not every badger I saw looked sick.  Small Twin 2 Cub, in particular, made regular appearances and seemed healthy.

 

 

 

 

 

I knew there was risk involved this spring when I chose to spend so much time watching badgers.  It’s impossible for me to get to know wild animals without becoming attached, and their lives are so precarious that bad things are bound to happen.  I understand that.  But this brutal wave of Canine Distemper – if that’s what it is – has been an especially dispiriting gut punch.

Jill and Greg, always thoughtful, recently gave me a stuffed animal badger.  “His name is Barry,” they said.  “We wanted you to have a badger that is guaranteed to stay healthy!”