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Stockholmers hunt killer badger after hipster cat attack

The Local Sweden
The Local Sweden - [email protected]
Stockholmers hunt killer badger after hipster cat attack
Not the badger in question – or is it? Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT

Residents of Stockholm’s hipster island Södermalm have declared war on a local badger after it attacked and killed a beloved neighbourhood cat.

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The feline in question was Nisse, who had lived on the street Metargatan for 14 years, according to the original report in Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

Residents would take turns at looking after and feeding him, so when Nisse was heard meowing loudly during the late hours of one September night, a local quickly rushed to the rescue.

When the person arrived at the scene they saw a badger running down the street. It had bitten the cat in the neck.

Locals claim that badger numbers in the area have grown, and are asking the local municipality to deal with the problem. But Stockholm council's wildlife officers insist that there has been no increase in the badger population in Sweden’s capital.

Sweden’s Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket) – the government agency which produces guidance on wild animals – also played down the event.

“It’s very rare for this to happen, the two animals usually avoid each other,” the agency’s wildlife management department told The Local.

“In fact, it’s so rare that there’s really no specific advice cat-owners should follow,” they added.

Regardless, the badger could soon become a badger brush for grooming all of those beards on Södermalm, Stockholm's hipster area. The municipality will now attempt to trap and kill the animal culpable for the cat attack, something that has led to a number of sarcastic comments from Swedes who read the story.

“Killer-badger bites a vegan cat from Söder to death – now it must die!” wrote one on Twitter. “Sweden’s Harambe,” added another.

Whether the badger will gain the fame of the aforementioned martyr gorilla, who met his fate at Cincinnati Zoo earlier this year, remains to be seen. They'll have to catch it first.

Incredibly, this isn't the first piece of breaking badger news in Sweden this year. In August a man was asked to leave a branch of McDonald's in Falköping after he walked in with a dead badger under his arm.

In 2015 meanwhile, a luxury hotel in central Stockholm came under siege from one of the angry animals, who refused to allow guests in or out of the building. 

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