By NANCY JANE KERN
IT WAS UNNERVING TO HOLD my great-great-grandmother’s rib. I looked at the hole the woodchuck dug into the family cemetery plot and suddenly knew how Hamlet felt when he held Yorick’s skull.
I never met this grandmother, but it was another reason to dislike woodchucks whose nature is to chew and dig burrows. The woodchuck is sometimes called the groundhog and is represented by Punxsutawney Phil who comes out of winter hibernation from his burrow in February to predict the rest of the winter weather. In our northern area, the woodchuck hibernates from October to March or April. The woodchuck, or Marmota monax, is a large rodent and is sometimes called the land beaver. It is an appropriate name because they are similar animals except for the beaver’s flat and hairless tail. Rodents have two top and two bottom front teeth which continuously grow to compensate for their constant chewing of vegetation and other materials. The growth also compels them to keep chewing. These sharp teeth and their substantial front digging claws can make them a formidable opponent if cornered and will attack a dog.
They can also run fast, climb trees, and swim if necessary. Normally they are about 16-26 inches long with a six-inch tail, weigh about 4-15 lbs., and live 2-3 years. Their hair has two layers, a dense layer next to the skin, and the outside layer, which is coarser and ticked with white, so they have a frosted look. They can give a loud and startling whistle as a warning to other woodchucks that a stranger is in the area.
Growing up we hunted them and often killed over 100 in a summer. My grandfather’s favorite pastime was hunting woodchucks and I served as his faithful companion and retriever. We would find a woodchuck hole and quietly sit for an hour or more, usually in the cooler evening, until a woodchuck cautiously came out of his hole. Gramp was a good shot and said all the summer practice on the woodchucks got him ready for the fall hunting seasons. My job was bringing them back to the pickup truck so we could take them home to the dogs. He would throw the woodchuck on the back lawn, take out his jackknife, and cut it open. The dogs relished them, and the only problem was taking the remains back to a field to dispose of them. There they became food for animals like foxes and eventually the vultures. They were not wasted.
Woodchuck holes were a big problem for farms because cows and horses could injure or break a leg in them, and machinery like mowers, and rakes were often damaged if the piles of dirt and stones around them were run over. They also made paths, ate a lot of grass, and could devastate a garden.
One summer we had a young pre-vet student from Cornell working for us who was studying survival techniques and learning how to live off the land. He made his bow and arrows and eventually got a woodchuck. We regarded these animals as dog food, but after he made kabobs of it and roasted them over a campfire, we decided to try it. It was very good, but once was enough.
Maybe we should reconsider this. They are organic, plentiful, tasty and locally grown. Maybe we should see how the farmers’ markets would feel about this. It is bad enough that one dug holes along my basement stone walls and ate yard flowers, but gnawing the casing of the garage door was the last straw. It is time to dust off the .22 rifle. Gramp would be happy.
