For those people not inclined to believe omens, the issue of whether Puxsutawny Phil of Pennsylvania will see his shadow will be of no importance. Tomorrow, February 2, 2011, is Groundhog Day, an opportunity for believers who adhere to the supposition that your ordinary, run-of-the-mill groundhog has the power to predict whether there will be a quick end to winter.
According to Wikipedia, "The groundhog (Marmota monax), also known as a woodchuck, or in some areas as a land-beaver, is a rodent of the family Sciuridae, belonging to the group of large ground squirrels known as marmots. Other marmots, such as the yellow-bellied and hoary marmots, live in rocky and mountainous areas, but the woodchuck is a lowland creature. It is widely distributed in North America and common in the northeastern and central United States. Groundhogs are found as far north as Alaska, with their habitat extending southeast to Alabama."
In the end, your cute groundhog is related to and somewhat similar in appearance to your common rat, but with a cuter tail. Nice tails can make the difference between socially unacceptable wildlife and visually appealing pests like squirrels. Squirrels get away with murder even though they dig up flower bulbs, take bites out of hanging fruit and other stuff. But I digress. Again.
According to the official Puxatawnyphil.com site (the hog has his own site!) the average groundhog is 20 inches long and normally weighs from 12 to 15 pounds. Punxsutawney Phil weighs about 20 pounds and is 22 inches long. Obviously he is well fed.
A groundhog's life span is normally 6 to 8 years. Phil receives a drink of a magical punch every summer during the annual Groundhog Picnic, which gives him 7 more years of life.
So tomorrow at sunrise, Phil will emerge with some help from his human friends, from his burrow at Gobbler's Knob, and his handlers will announce whether or not Phil has seen his shadow. If Phil sees his shadow, legend has it that we can expect six more weeks of winter weather. No shadow indicates an early spring.
Thing is...and one (me) wonders if it has occurred to anyone that perhaps - just perhaps - Phil doesn't really want to come out of his cozy burrow or man-made... whatever. Maybe he would rather sleep through winter like his friends and relatives instead of being wrenched from his sleep and thrust into the limelight and media melee.
Another perplexing question - at least worthy of consideration - is whether Phil's prediction is applicable for the Pennsylvania area or the entire North American continent?
I'll go out on a limb here and predict that there will be more cold weather, snow storms and freezing temps until Spring. Hey - I'm not even related to a groundhog!
UPDATE!!! ACCORDING TO THE HOG(S) PREDICTIONS TODAY, THERE WILL BE AN EARLY SPRING, SO PUT AWAY YOUR SHOVELS AND SNOW-BLOWERS!
Showing posts with label groundhogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label groundhogs. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Here a rabbit...there a groundhog - garden pests dealt with severely by gardeners
Gardeners as a rule are a protective lot, especially when it comes to the fruit of their labor so to speak. There are some who sow crops of carrots, lettuce, cukes, tomatoes etc. in their backyard suburban garden, anticipating a fresh salad al fresco. However, not only do humans enjoy freshly picked veggies - so do all the local wildlife and therein lies the problem. It's a case of the humans versus the wildlife with a not-so-happy end result in some cases.
Take the article in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/garden/05animals.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
with some gardeners finding a solution by taking things into their own hands. There are those who take more drastic measures using guns and other weapons to solve the problem. Here is the opening of the story:
THE homeowner, a city-boy artist and illustrator who had moved to rural Pennsylvania, never wanted to kill the woodchucks. Sure, they were ruining the garden and digging up the foundations of outbuildings, but it was a moral issue: the artist, who is still so uncomfortable about what transpired — and so concerned about how his New York clients would feel about it that he is not willing to be identified — did not want to take a life.
"I posted a sign in the backyard (positioned close to ground level) with a recipe for rabbit pie. I think the bunnies got the message."CE, Plano, TX
Given the size of the property — a 12-acre former horse farm — fencing was out of the question. He bought a Havahart live animal trap but did not catch a thing. And he worried that releasing woodchucks down the road would only be dumping the problem on a neighbor. So he moved on to that tried-and-true landlord’s tactic: harassment. He attached a hose to the exhaust pipe of his old pickup truck and stuffed it into a burrow — not to kill the woodchucks, just to encourage them to move on. That didn’t work, either.
Finally, the artist decided he would have to shoot the animals. First, though, he went to each hole and made an announcement.
“I said: ‘I intend to kill you. You have 24 hours to get out,’ ” he recalls. “I wanted to give them fair warning. I said, ‘If I were you, I would find another place to live.’ I also promised them I would not take a shot unless I knew it would be fatal.”
He is making this into a funny story, he says, but when he killed his first woodchuck he “literally felt sick.”
“I went outside and knelt down to it and said a little prayer to whatever the powers that be that when my turn comes, I will do it as gracefully and uncomplainingly.”
Eventually, though, he embraced his mission, and grew so obsessed with it that an aunt began to call him Woodchuck Johnny. How many did he kill that summer?
“I stopped at 19,” he says. “One was a suicide. It realized its days were numbered and ran in front of a car.”
There are a lot more stories about how plain ordinary, "normal" gardeners like you or me, handled the situation. As an aside 325 gardeners , some who agree with garden guerilla tactics and many others shocked, who let their feelings be known with e-letters to the editor of the New York Times.
Read the entire story and decide for yourself.
Take the article in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/garden/05animals.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
with some gardeners finding a solution by taking things into their own hands. There are those who take more drastic measures using guns and other weapons to solve the problem. Here is the opening of the story:
THE homeowner, a city-boy artist and illustrator who had moved to rural Pennsylvania, never wanted to kill the woodchucks. Sure, they were ruining the garden and digging up the foundations of outbuildings, but it was a moral issue: the artist, who is still so uncomfortable about what transpired — and so concerned about how his New York clients would feel about it that he is not willing to be identified — did not want to take a life.
"I posted a sign in the backyard (positioned close to ground level) with a recipe for rabbit pie. I think the bunnies got the message."CE, Plano, TX
Given the size of the property — a 12-acre former horse farm — fencing was out of the question. He bought a Havahart live animal trap but did not catch a thing. And he worried that releasing woodchucks down the road would only be dumping the problem on a neighbor. So he moved on to that tried-and-true landlord’s tactic: harassment. He attached a hose to the exhaust pipe of his old pickup truck and stuffed it into a burrow — not to kill the woodchucks, just to encourage them to move on. That didn’t work, either.
Finally, the artist decided he would have to shoot the animals. First, though, he went to each hole and made an announcement.
“I said: ‘I intend to kill you. You have 24 hours to get out,’ ” he recalls. “I wanted to give them fair warning. I said, ‘If I were you, I would find another place to live.’ I also promised them I would not take a shot unless I knew it would be fatal.”
He is making this into a funny story, he says, but when he killed his first woodchuck he “literally felt sick.”
“I went outside and knelt down to it and said a little prayer to whatever the powers that be that when my turn comes, I will do it as gracefully and uncomplainingly.”
Eventually, though, he embraced his mission, and grew so obsessed with it that an aunt began to call him Woodchuck Johnny. How many did he kill that summer?
“I stopped at 19,” he says. “One was a suicide. It realized its days were numbered and ran in front of a car.”
There are a lot more stories about how plain ordinary, "normal" gardeners like you or me, handled the situation. As an aside 325 gardeners , some who agree with garden guerilla tactics and many others shocked, who let their feelings be known with e-letters to the editor of the New York Times.
Read the entire story and decide for yourself.
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