Badgers have 38 teeth, including four extra-sharp ever-dangerous canine teeth. Once they were classified with bears, due to their similarities. Badgers love honey. They have powerful claws, which can not be retracted. I beleive that badgers are considered to be members of the weasel family.

Badgers prefer the night, sometimes seen only in the mornings as they trot home to their burrow.

Although I don’t pretend to know how a person could be expected to know if a badger passed on the path behind them . . . especially in the dark of night -- during the Dark Ages it was believed that if a badger crossed on the path behind you it was considered good luck.

The opposite was true for those who spotted a badger on the path ahead of them. It was once believed that if a badger stopped and scratched the earth on the path in front of someone, as if digging a grave, the witnessing person was bound to die soon.

I can not know what the Medieval would think of a person who intentionally crosses the path of a badger.

Besides, for all I know, any ability the badger once held at fortune telling may have been discounted long ago and replaced by the Groundhog in current mythology and animal lore.

For Badger symblosim in American Totem Culture, check out http://www.sayahda.com/cycle.htm