Welcome to Litsy!

This one of the Animal series published by Reaktion Books and I intend to read more. I love the blend of natural history with mythology, literature, popular culture, and the historical connections between badgers and humans. Nice to hear the perspective of an #Indigenousvoice too. The chapter on sadistic cruelty towards badgers was a tough read, though, just saying.

Modelled in part on the flamboyant and tradition-flaunting Oscar Wilde, the aristocratic Toad stands somewhat apart from the domesticating morality of these stolid, upper-middle-class mammals.
[illustration by EH Shepard]

In The Wind in the Willows is "a male-dominated world where gender is largely fluid, and where the main characters are defined far more by their domestic delights and affections than with the very brief battle at the story's end."

I'm learning about badgers in folklore, as in this medieval medical info, where it's said that if "anything of evil has been done to any one so that he may not enjoy his sexual lusts, let him boil a badger's testicles in running spring-water & in honey & let him take it then fasting for 3 days; he will soon be better."

Hanging out with critters at my brother's farm, reading about badgers. #cozy

Just started reading this cultural history of an animal I haven't thought much about by a favourite author of mine. I love his Indigenous queer fantasy trilogy so am interested to see what this very different book is like!