Brits Deny Responsibility for Killer Badgers

The British troops serving in Iraq want to make one thing perfectly clear: they did not introduce man-eating badgers to Iraq, period.Locals near the southern Iraqi city of Basra have begun circulating rumors that the deadly 30-pound creatures were brought in by the British to cause panic.


And here we were thinking that a surge of human soldiers would be the way to go.

Suad Hassan, 30, an Iraqi housewife, claimed she had been attacked by one of the badgers as she slept.


"My husband hurried to shoot it but it was as swift as a deer," she said. "It is the size of a dog but his head is like a monkey."


A local veterinary expert identified the fearsome animals as honey badgers, indigenous to Africa and the Middle East, and further stated that they had been in Iraq as early as 1986. They are nocturnal, and will attack humans only if cornered. Another local veterinary expert suggested that the badgers were driven into areas inhabited by humans by flooding in local marshlands. The animals can be mean-tempered, but they are mainly a threat to honeybees and their beekeepers.


UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: "We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area."(Read Story here.)