GROUNDHOG!!

[Safety Guy]

The other day I saw this on my back porch:



I took that pic through the screen door window since whenever I try to open it and sneak a better picture, they run off real fast. So the next pic I took was also through the door:



Well, since I had just documented the existence and location of this beast for posterity, I decided to slowly, quietly open the screen door for an even better, though unlikely, picture.

I got it open and SUCCESS!, I then took this one:



Just look at it! Like he is on Spring Break looking out from his hotel balcony, planning on where to go, how much to drink and what kinda trouble to get into! This guy was completely absorbed in his sightseeing and hadn't heard me, so I snapped another with some zoom:



And then I let him know I was there. I said in a stern voice, "HEY HAWG!" and snapped another picture without delay!:



Gone in sixty milliseconds!

Next time I'll try to remember my camera does video!

Karl

[FestYboy]

a .22 at that distance would easily have dispatched that rodent... (i have "0" love for groundhogs, if i see one and i have access to a firearm, it gets shot)

[jesteratc]

They also make very strange noises when lodged into a fan belt of a 92 suburban. They are surprisingly durable tho.

[Bert]

They also make very strange noises when lodged into a fan belt of a 92 suburban. They are surprisingly durable tho.

I guess so! I skinned out quite a few wild rabbits when I was a kid and the pelts were always paper thin. Did this with a woodchuck, just once, and had a skin that could have been used as a coffee platter, it was so tough.

Woodchucks/groundhogs, Safety Guy, are bad news if you are an avid gardener plus they tunnel and make burrows all over the place in yards. You are gonna want to persuade this lad to relocate pronto. Application of a discrete and quiet 22 CB long is one way and another is to block off all the burrows except one. The one that you funnel engine exhaust fumes into for a good half hour.

[Movin]

That one looks well cared for!

[deathrace2000]

One time, a rodent like that crawled upwards into the engine bay of my C10 and chewed through the plug wires. >:/

[Tommychu]

They also make very strange noises when lodged into a fan belt of a 92 suburban. They are surprisingly durable tho.

The belt drive is pretty durable on late SBCs too; who won?
Also there's a Bill Murray joke in here somewhere but I can't find it.

[kumalaba]

they are very good to eat!! sorry folks but they are!

[Bert]

they are very good to eat!! sorry folks but they are!

You Americans take the cake! You characters also seem to relish eating squirrels (ie wasn't it 'Pennsylvania/Kentucky squirrel guns' that routed the British?). Woodchucks are greasy to the extreme and I figure you'd want to boil the stew until the rock you put in with it softened up.
Up here, mind you, tails off beavers and porcupine legs are supposed to be delicacies, neither of which I've tried as long as geese, ducks, grouse, turkeys, deer and moose abound. The natives up north swear that lynx is the ultimate wild game for delicacy.

[jesteratc]

The suburban won. Still going strong over 230k miles and the engines never been rebuilt.

[kumalaba]

You Americans take the cake! You characters also seem to relish eating squirrels (ie wasn't it 'Pennsylvania/Kentucky squirrel guns' that routed the British?). Woodchucks are greasy to the extreme and I figure you'd want to boil the stew until the rock you put in with it softened up.
Up here, mind you, tails off beavers and porcupine legs are supposed to be delicacies, neither of which I've tried as long as geese, ducks, grouse, turkeys, deer and moose abound. The natives up north swear that lynx is the ultimate wild game for delicacy.

oooh squirrel dumplings yummy! coons are greasy but groundhogs yummy

[sketchman]

Squirrels are good. I've only tasted one once when I was little, and nobody hunts anymore in my family. Guess I should take it up.

[Bert]

One time, a rodent like that crawled upwards into the engine bay of my C10 and chewed through the plug wires. >:/

Many years ago (1975) I was shown a large steel culvert, with chain link fence doors, that a wealthy owner had built to store his Corvette in, on a rural and forested property in the 1000 Islands. The reason; 2 years before (there would have been salt spray accumulation on the previous car) over the course of a winter a family of porcupines had reduced the fellow's previous Corvette entirely into shavings. Even the wheels were ruined and the porkies had had the odd 'lifter' when a tire blew in their faces and some discomfort when the oil lines, hydraulics and battery case began to leak. I was led to believe his insurance did not want to cover an "act of God" either and had no provisions for doling out cash because of persistent rodent gnawing.
Porkys, by the way, are rep of a unique type of rodent (Hystricomorpha) with ancestry in s America. and are only ones that managed to spread into and colonize n America.

[kumalaba]

armadillo any good?

[zoom zoom]

Groundhogs make a really weird noise when the steel toe gets ahold of them. It's not like the high pitch squeek of a (o)possum, more like a mix between a tiger growling and a banshee screaming... it's weird, you should try it! Just make sure it goes far enough that it doesn't turn right around and try to climb up your leg, they can be kinda mean but they're not nearly as aggressive as a beaver or a skunk.