The woodchuck (marmota monax) is a pestilence upon our land… so much so that they make other pestilences look like mere blights…
The woodchuck, also known as the “groundhog”, “earth-cow” and “Xantar the Torturer of the Damned”, is a fossorial marmot. If you aren’t impressed, just try being a fossorial marmot for a few hours and see how well you do; “woodchuck” is also the answer to the riddle, “What isn’t cute enough to be a squirrel and not smart enough to be a beaver?”. They inhabit the good section of the east coast and most of Canada. Further south, there are no woodchucks… only sink holes; so, m. monax brings sink holes to the north.
M. monax can weigh as much as fifteen pounds. Twice that if there are two of them. It is twenty-seven inches long, unless you take away the tail. But, if you take away its tail,
what kind of monster are you? Their incisors grow quickly… around a sixteenth of an inch every week. This is why most woodchucks look like Gary Busey. And, like Gary Busey, they spend a LOT of time pissing people off.
When it comes to diet, m. monax is not picky. It’s fine with whatever is growing in your garden…. that is, when it isn’t carefully constructing a network of tunnels just under the surface of your yard in an effort to cripple you. There was talk of putting a national bounty on woodchucks, but it was determined that they just find the posters and draw mustaches on them so no one would recognize them.
Oddly enough, m. monax builds burrows that end up being used by other animals, such as foxes. And, foxes eat woodchucks; therefore, the woodchuck actually provides the very means by which his population is controlled.
A woodchuck’s lifespan is around six years… so if you elect one to the Senate, prepare for it to die while in office. They breed in early spring and usually give birth about a
month later. Their young are hairless and blind… but don’t feel too superior… you’ll be bald and blind soon enough. By the end of summer, the young are out crippling farmers and passing themselves off as Gary Busey.
Whereas most animals just give lip-service to hibernation, the woodchuck is one of the few animals that actually DOES hibernate in the classical sense. While nestled in below the frost-line, its heart rate drops to less than ten beats a minute and breathing down to once every six minutes.
Woodchucks can be domesticated if you are willing to apply the effort and aren’t too emotionally attached to your fingers. Occasionally, they expose archeological finds, like at the Ufferman site in Ohio; but, when archeologists go to study them, they invariably twist an ankle on one of their stupid holes.
Robert Frost wrote a poem about woodchucks, I believe. No accounting for tastes…
Potatoes and the Promise of More Potatoes 
I thought we were doing Groundhog Day Charles????? 🙁😞🙁
LikeLiked by 1 person
Woodchucks ARE groundhogs.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah but it wasn’t like Groundhog day 😦 And they don’t sound as funny as Groundhog Day 😦
LikeLiked by 1 person
Do you think I write all this stuff to be FUNNY???
LikeLike
Did you find out how much wood a woodchuck can chuck? Sorry…..And I thought earth cow described ME best.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My son asked the same question, last night.
I think the term you seek for yourself is “Earth-Mother”. Fun fact: “Earth-Mother” rhymes with “birth-mother” if you ever decide to write that poem…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ooooooo, that’s good. Now I just have to work it into my “roses are red” theme!
LikeLiked by 1 person
On behalf of my current residents, I take umbrage with this post and will be suing for chucker libel. Being compared to Gary Busey is a bridge too far, even for a pesky rodent.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the resemblance!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I refuse to answer that …. they might attack at any moment.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Just say, in a loud voice, “I loved you in the Buddy Holly Story!”
LikeLiked by 1 person
For anyone tired of pondering the question “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck,” have you ever wondered, How many chuckles could a woodchuck chuckle if a woodchuck could chuckle chucking wood? Dang if I know:
LikeLiked by 2 people
Or, for chemistry majors: “If a mole of moles each dug a mole of holes, how many holes would there be?”
LikeLiked by 1 person
I love that commercial!!
LikeLiked by 2 people
So if I ever see a film with Gary Busey in it, it might actually be a woodchuck impersonating him? That explains a lot.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Busey starred in The Buddy Holly Story and did a fine job. Then, riding his motorcycle without a helmet, he got a head injury and became REALLY erratic… kind of a parody of himself.
So, if you watch anything with him in it, go for pre-accident…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Or one with a woodchuck in it…
LikeLiked by 1 person
The Gary Busey reference and photo made me snort coffee through my nose! Perfect!
LikeLiked by 1 person
If I can cause just one reader to snort coffee through his nose, then my life has not been in vain!
LikeLiked by 1 person
LOL! But I am no one…and his photo looked just like a Beaver…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Jerry Mathers?
LikeLike