Pyro the badger
He lived across the pond, in a tunnel he'd dug and kept to himself, and for the better part of a season I watched him without ever once interfering — out to hunt, back to his hole, the same quiet rhythm repeated, evening after evening. I never thought of him as a threat during that time. I thought of him as a neighbor, one more creature making a life on the same raw ground I was trying to make mine. Watching him was its own small pleasure, the same as flipping rocks for the chickens or walking the flock out past the pond.
Then one night, he came for the coop.
I could have shot him. I have never believed in killing what I could still meet honestly, so instead I met him — a bat in my hand, the dogs beside me, fifteen real minutes of danger in the dark before he finally backed off and returned to his tunnel. He never came again after that.
This painting isn't him mid-fight. It's him the way I actually picture him most — emerging half-seen out of warm, hazy light, that single sharp stripe of white the only thing fully resolved against a face that stays mostly in shadow. That's honest to what he actually was to me: never fully known, never fully seen, a presence more than a portrait, right up until the one night he had to be.
One original. Open to offers.
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