A/N: The much-mentioned event is finally revealed! For the uninitiated, this takes place during one of my stories, Acts of Mercy. If you haven't read it, please check it out! Otherwise, enjoy this little piece.

People seldom take Cabin maintenance seriously. They talk about how "quaint' and 'rustique' (Yes, with the que) the whole business is, but you never see the dirt, bugs, and other crap that comes with 'rustique' living.

For one thing, there isn't anything quaint about how you go about getting clean with no running water. I won't go into a ton of detail about it (perverts) but let's just say that when you have to boil the water, one kettle-full at a time, haul a tin bathtub from the woodshed into the place, only to get a measly coupla tepid inches to work with, you make sure to scrub every damn inch.

I won't go into detail about skinning stuff, either, but I will tell you that though blood's hard to get out of clothing, a woman has her ways.

To put it short, surviving ain't pretty. I might make it look pretty, but that's 'cos I'm a shitty writer. I don't talk about all the messy crap that goes on, partly because, for me, it's par for the course (It'd be like you writing about what you eat for breakfast every day) and also because most people readin' this would either run off screaming, or find it boring as hell. So, I skip the nasty stuff. I'll tell you, though, that there's a lotta crap that goes around here that you wouldn't know the start of, that doesn't have a thing to do with zombies.

Take badgers.

You see them in the adorable little cartoons, etc. and people see them as mostly benign. Wrong in one.

Badgers are nasty buggers. They carry all sorts of shit diseases (True, they won't zombify you, but there's worse things than that in the world) they have awful tempers, and they get in places you never want them to, e.g. outhouses.

This was just on the day I came back. I'd been occupying myself with various Cabin chores throughout the day; though humanity might be facing flesh-eating creatures, it was no excuse for how much dust, dirt, dead bugs, and various small deceased rodents had accumulated in the past several months. The MRE's, despite the presence of pests, hadn't been touched, though I think it had less to do with how they were stored and more with the fact that they were MRE's. I hadn't gotten to cleaning out the woodshed or anything outside until the late afternoon. Armed with a broom, I pulled open the rusty-hinged door to what us outdoorists call la toilette, expecting to find only dust at worst.

Wrong in one, again.

Something dark and furry shot out of the gloom, rushing straight at me like a zombie at a cashier, and latched onto my boot with needle-sharp teeth.

Clothes may not make the man, but steel-toed boots make living easier. It means that you aren't easily bothered by life's little hassles, like dropping wood on your foot, or stubbing your toe on sidewalks, or a badger doing its best to take a good-sized chunk out of your ankle. So I was otherwise unperturbed by this possibly rabid mammalian, and had the good sense to kick it straight across the clearing, where it rolled to a stop as it landed.

Unfortunately, the badger lacked this good sense, (And, apparently, any broken bones) because, even though I'd kicked it several yards down, it picked up its little badger ass and came back at me, charging forward with all the determination of Saxton Hale going to beat up a bunch of hippies.

I stepped aside, tidily, and it missed me, landing smack against the outhouse headfirst as it rushed at me.

The now fuming badger whipped around, hissing like a punctured balloon, with fire in its eyes. I shoved it with the broom, hoping it would get the message and bugger off.

Instead, the badger seemed to take it as an invitation, and clamped down on the broom handle.

"Leggo." I said , shaking the broom back and forth. The badger, however, refused to relinquish its grip.

I stopped shaking, but the badger still clung on.

Experimentally, I lifted the broom off the ground. The badger came with it, kicking and swinging its little feet in the air, holding on by its teeth and giving me a red-eyed look of pure malice.

"You." I said, flatly to the rodent, "Are a persistent little bastard."

The badger didn't reply, and just kept swinging. I sighed, and carried the broom a ways off into the woods. The badger hung on, its jaws still fixed to the handle. Eventually, I reached a spot about a quarter a mile from The Cabin.

I put the broom down, and the badger let go, gratefully, and then shot me a crazy-eyed looked of hatred.

"Shoo." I said, nudging it with my boot. The badger finally seemed to get the message, and scurried off to places unknown.

I walked back to The Cabin with a broom that had teeth-marks in it, and boots with holes in them. "Damn rodent." I muttered under my breath, and opened the door to the outhouse again to finish sweeping. "I'll be glad when this is over…"

There was a snarl from the depths.

"Oh, shi—"

After the second badger had been deposed of (The first one's always the hardest) all was peaceful. The outhouse was cleaned out, The Cabin was dusted, and there were no further Incidents.

Well, until a zombie fell out of the sky. (But that's another story.)

A/N: See? I'm not dead! Just working on Book 2. Wrote this to burn off some steam, it was actually pretty fun for me. Hope you enjoyed it-Please check out my other work Acts of Mercy, which contains less badgers, more zombies, and even more swearing.
Keep watching, y'all!

-Author