The Truth about WOODCHUCKS

Animals, Sept, 2000 by Sy Montgomery

IT is said that for every creature on this Earth there is a purpose," began the lead article of the newsletter of the New England Pumpkin Growers Association. But editor Hugh Wiberg clearly doesn't believe it. "Someday, maybe," he writes, "someone will explain to me the `purpose' of woodchucks."

To Wiberg, the woodchuck, like the despised squash beetle, is simply one more obstacle standing between him and the 1,000-pound record-breaking pumpkin of his dreams. Similar dark thoughts plague gardeners of more ordinary ambitions as ripening vegetables disappear and woodchucks, just coincidentally, grow rounder and rounder.

But the woodchuck is on his own schedule. By July of each year, he begins to accumulate the half-inch layer of fat that will sustain his winter hibernation. A particularly hungry woodchuck in a single day may eat the equivalent of one-third of his body weight. Since a big `chuck can weigh 15 pounds, that's quite a chunk out ora prize-winning pumpkin.

And then there are woodchuck holes. With entrances six inches across, the burrows run 25 to 30 feet long and plunge 2 to 5 feet. Digging one entails the removal of 700 pounds of subsoil--and the cavity left behind can topple a tractor driving over it. The woodchuck, it is said, "eats to give himself the strength to dig holes, and then dig holes to give himself an appetite."

None of which endears him to gardeners or farmers. But farmers made the woodchuck the ubiquitous animal that he is-one of the most frequently seen mammals in North America.

Before the arrival of European settlers, woodchucks were not particularly numerous; they kept to the woods, and they were generally admired. The Eastern Abenaki Indians of present-day Maine considered the woodchuck their maternal ancestor, a wise grandmother who taught them to fish, hunt, and build canoes.

As the European arrivals cleared their wooded territory, woodchucks adapted. Because farmers planted plenty of food and also exterminated most of the woodchucks' natural predators--wolves, cougars, and lynx--the animals thrived in this new, open habitat, where their numbers have been recorded as high as 39 per square mile. Today their only predators are hawks, dogs, people, and cars.

Even though they had brought this population explosion on themselves, farmers declared war on the animals. In 1883, for instance, New Hampshire established a Legislative Woodchuck Committee, pronounced the animal "absolutely destitute of any interesting qualities," and set a bounty of 10 cents for every animal killed. Other states followed suit. Today there's no bounty, but the war on woodchucks continues.

Naturalist Meade Cadot thinks it's time to rehabilitate the woodchuck's reputation. First, he'd just stop calling the critter a woodchuck--or even its other name, groundhog, of February fame. "Really, it's a marmot," says the Antioch New England Graduate School professor. And marmots aren't vermin, he says.

Marmota monax, as it's known by its Latin name, is one of North America's five species of marmots, members of the squirrel family, albeit exceptionally fat ones. The other marmots all live out West, not in fields but among mountains, where they enjoy the respectable reputation of "watchable wildlife."

The eastern marmots, if they're not eating your garden, are just as engaging. Ask Genie Ferguson, the booking agent for the three woodchucks of Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary in Lincoln, Massachusetts. They make public appearances at schools, camps, and nursing homes for Traveling Audubon Ark's wildlife education programs. "All three woodchucks are booked every day," Ferguson says--sometimes, twice a day. "Kids think they're adorable, like a giant guinea pig or hamster," remarks Diane Barker, caretaker to the stars at the Audubon sanctuary.

Even if the Audubon Ark doesn't stop at your neighborhood, it's likely that wild woodchucks will. You'll see them foraging at the edge of fields, nibbling the grass along median strips, chomping on dandelions and daisies in parks. Sometimes you'll see one holding a choice morsel in both hands, like a child clutching a big apple. You can watch them wash their faces with their dexterous, long-fingered hands. During the warmest part of the day, you might see one basking in the sun or sleeping on a stone wall, a fallen log--or even atop a fence post.

Woodchucks are surprisingly good climbers. They can scramble over fencing as well as burrow under it, and they can make their way up low trees to get fruit. They can swim, too. But in summer, such athleticism is seldom called for--other than to stand up periodically on hind legs for a better view. In this position, many observers have remarked, the groundhog looks like a portly senator about to make a speech.

If the creature sees something particularly alarming, it might give a shrill whistle (indeed, the woodchuck is also called a whistle-pig) and dive down the nearest hole.

A woodchuck seldom ventures more than 50 yards from its burrow. Each adult has a summer and a winter burrow, some with three to five entrances (sometimes called plunge holes). In fact, 'chucks are the architects of most of the big holes you find in woods and fields. Fastidious housekeepers, they renovate burrow entrances several times a week. Evidence of fresh digging indicates that a burrow is occupied.