Earlier this week I came home to find this brown fuzzy critter browsing the grass and the clover in our yard, as the sun set and the dusk began to creep across the lawn.
We’ve seen woodchucks in the yard for many years – they seem to have built their burrows out under our boatshed. On this evening, though, I discovered three browsing our yard! When I came outside to photograph them they scurried quickly back to the shelter of the boathouse (seen in blue, below).
Woodchucks – also known as groundhogs – are actually pretty interesting critters, as learned through Wikipedia. The name woodchuck stems from an Algonquian (possibly Narragansett) name for the animal, wuchak. They live three to six years, and hibernate every winter (deep under our boathouse, apparently). They form complex social networks, so it is possible this threesome are friends rather than relatives. Worth a read!
David Kotz 