It is a peculiarity of the human condition that we reserve our deepest admiration for those who make us feel foolish, provided they do so with sufficient style.

Stoffel had style.

Stoffel was a honey badger — which is to say, he was approximately the size of a large domestic cat and possessed of enough combined fearlessness, ingenuity, and general contempt for the established order to destabilise a small government. He had arrived at the Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in the Limpopo region of South Africa in the manner that honey badgers generally arrive at places: unexpectedly, on his own terms, and with absolutely no intention of remaining on yours.

The staff at Moholoholo were experienced wildlife rehabilitators. They had handled lions, leopards, and animals of considerably greater physical menace than a badger of middling dimensions. They were competent, professional, and quietly confident that they understood the parameters of their work.

Stoffel found this confidence charming, in the way that a chess grandmaster finds a seven-year-old's opening move charming — with patience, mild interest, and the comfortable knowledge of what comes next.

The First Engagement

The enclosure selected for Stoffel was, by any reasonable assessment, secure. Gates, latches, reinforced fencing — the full complement of human ingenuity applied to the straightforward problem of containing one medium-sized mustelid. The staff surveyed their work with the satisfaction of people who have solved something.

Stoffel surveyed it with professional interest.

He studied the gate. He studied the latch. He studied the humans — their habits, their schedules, their touching faith in the permanence of their arrangements. This took several days, which was not procrastination but reconnaissance.

Then he opened the gate and walked out.

Not scrambled. Not bolted. Walked — with the unhurried dignity of a committee member who has sat through quite enough of this particular meeting and has other calls on his afternoon. The latch, it emerged, had not presented him with any intellectual difficulty. It had simply required the courtesy of his attention.

The staff found him outside and returned him to the enclosure with the uneasy feeling of people who have been handed back a problem they thought they'd filed.

The Question of Altitude

The humans upgraded the enclosure. Higher walls. Better latches. The full architectural response.

Stoffel upgraded his strategy.

He gathered rocks.

This alone should have prompted a fundamental review of the situation's implications. A honey badger gathering rocks is not performing a random behaviour. A honey badger gathering rocks has an objective. The staff watched him roll the stones into a serviceable pile against the wall, and it is to their credit that they recognised what was happening, even if recognition arrived slightly too late to be useful.