Hairy Houdini’s escapes
In the 2002 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, the honey badger is listed as “the world’s most fearless animal”, a perfect description for our hero, Stoffel.
Stoffel began life in domesticity, reared by a farmer, but after he created chaos in the farmer’s house, he was taken to the Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre near the Kruger National Park in South Africa. Unfortunately, Stoffel kept escaping. Stoffel undid the locks on the gate, helped by an accomplice, who climbed on top of him to undo the top latch as he undid the bottom.
Wire was put up to secure the locked gate, but Stoffel unwound it and out he went again.
To protect the other animals, staff put him in a quarter-hectare camp. When he broke out to fight nearby lions, he ended up in hospital for two months. When he got out, Stoffel tried to get back to the lions, maybe to sort ’em out.
A rotary club then sponsored a new brick enclosure. The walls were too high and smooth for Stoffel to scale. So he just dug under them. When measures were taken to stop his digging, he climbed a tree, bending its branches to reach the wall, and walked out.
When a keeper left a rake in his enclosure, he moved it to the wall and climbed up it. He also tried rolling rocks to the wall, and using them to leapfrog out. He even made himself an escape route with a mud ramp.
Now, the Harry Houdini of the badger world is an ambassador for his species, attracting visitors from far and wide.