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Woodchuck
Also called: Marmot.
Length.—24 inches.
Description.—Heavy and thick-set, with short legs and rather short brushy tail. Colour grizzly or yellowish-gray varied with black and rusty, underparts rusty, feet black.
Range.—New York and southern New England to Georgia and North Dakota, represented northward by an allied variety, others occur westward.
Range.—Boreal regions north of the preceding.
Range.—Labrador.
Length.—15 inches.
Description.—Resembles the spermophiles but the ears are very short, and the tail very short and flat, colour brownish above varied with gray and black hairs, soiled white below, tail black toward the end.
Range.—Western Texas and Kansas to the base of the Rocky Mountains north to Montana. Allied varieties occur in Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming.
In every part of the world where the winters are sufficiently severe, there is pretty sure to be found a certain proportion of the wild animals that manage to do away with the most unpleasant part of the year, as far as they are concerned at least, by tucking themselves up in some out-of-the-way corner and sleeping or dozing or hibernating the time away, each according to its own particular taste, until spring comes round again. And certainly no more satisfactory method could be devised for spending the winter, either as regards economy or personal comfort.
It is probably to this habit that the dormouse of the Old World owes its reputation of being the most ridiculously sleepy and drowsy little beast in the universe, though I fancy that a good many of the animals on this side of the Atlantic could give him points on the matter of taking protracted naps, as might naturally be expected in a climate where the temperature is liable to vary over one hundred degrees in the course of a twelvemonth. The dormouse, it would seem, does not depend entirely on its faculty for sleeping; to while away the long winter hours, but in the autumn puts by a store of hazelnuts and whenever the weather turns warmer for a few days, though it is in the very depth of the winter, he wakes up for a luncheon and a breath of fresh air, and then turns in again for another nap, so keeping a general idea of the weather as the mild English winter wears itself away.