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Woodchuck — Part 2
Images coming soon.
But how much does the oldest woodchuck know of the New England winter? He can only realize that there are spring, summer and autumn, and then spring again, with only occasional flurries of snow and severe frost occurring at long intervals, perhaps a dozen times in the course of his life. If, as seems probable, the woodchuck really sleeps all winter long, then his waking hours occupy an extremely small portion of his life, for during the entire summer he spends the greater part of his time in his hole, and as he never takes his meals there, it is hard to imagine how he can occupy himself at such times except in sleeping. He is, perhaps, the least industrious animal in existence except when engaged in digging his hole, when he works away at a tremendous rate until it is finished; but once it is completed, he seldom attempts to enlarge or remodel it in any way, but spends his days in luxurious ease, coming out to get his breakfast soon after sunrise, while the dew is still on the grass, at which time I fancy he makes his most substantial meal, though he may occasionally be seen feeding at any time of day. At noon he is pretty sure to make his appearance above ground for luncheon, but apparently spends more time then in sunning himself than in eating. Late in the afternoon he again shows himself, and feeds until nearly sunset, when he descends into his burrow for the night. It is not often that he is obliged to go many steps from his doorway in order to fill himself, and by autumn he has usually reached a perfectly ludicrous state of obesity. There are usually several openings to the burrow, connected by well-beaten paths; similar paths radiate off into the grass in all directions, from one clump of clover to the next, and only too often to the bean patch or garden where it pleases him to eat out the tender inside of several cabbage heads in a single night. Beans he strips of leaves, pods and everything, and he is not averse to ears of corn and young pumpkin vines; in fact, there are few things raised in an ordinary vegetable garden which he does not occasionally exhibit a taste for. He is also fond of sweet apples and fruits of various kinds, frequently making his home in the orchard for the purpose of enjoying them. When the grass is tall enough he likes to move about in the various paths he has made, nibbling here and there, as suits his pleasure, and sitting bolt upright from time to time to look about him. His attitude toward his enemies is apt to be one of obstinate defiance. Other wild animals of his size, almost without exception, prefer, when in the proximity of houses, to remain in hiding during the day, only venturing out under cover of darkness. But the woodchuck often digs his hole within a few rods of a farmhouse and swaggers boldly about the garden at midday helping himself to whatever appeals most strongly to his appetite. When pursued he scrambles in frantic haste for his burrow, his black heels twinkling in the sunshine as he goes, but on reaching safety he is likely to turn about and thrust out his nose to chuckle defiance at his pursuers. If cornered, he is always ready to fight anything or anybody, and a dog lacking experience in such matters is likely to get the worst of it, for a woodchuck's incisors are weapons not to be despised. If their den is dug out, the woodchucks often manage to escape by burrowing off through the soil, after the manner of moles, filling up the holes behind them as they move along, and evidently not coming to the surface until sufficient time has elapsed to ensure their safety, though how they manage to avoid suffocation in the meantime is a question difficult to answer. They are often killed with shotguns, though this is no easy matter to accomplish; for though not a difficult animal to approach, the skin of an old one is pretty nearly a quarter of an inch thick, and the bones of the head are so solid that it requires the heaviest kind of shot and a gun that carries close and hard at ordinary shooting range to injure him. The majority of those that are killed are caught in steel traps at the mouth of their burrows.