An unspoken hunger*

This spring I have a woodchuck living under my back porch.

Talk about conflicted! I’m about to launch this season’s vegetable garden and now I find out there is a four-legged appetite beneath the boards. He couldn’t have picked a better place—the porch is only inches from the ground and no predator large enough to consider ground hog a menu item can possibly join him there.

My heartless neighbors have two pit bulls but they live behind a chain link fence, connected to their tiny dog houses by short chains. (Don’t get me started …) My cats are indoor denizens—and in any event are smaller than my new buddy.

The plump little critter is cute, waddling around the yard in the early morning, nibbling on wild things. Of course I know there’s nearly nothing a ground hog won’t eat or at least sample.

What to do? Electric fence? Only plant that which woodchucks detest? (onions, garlic and …?) Drag out the Hav-A-Hart trap and relocate him?

Stay tuned.

*The title of this post is also that of Terry Tempest Williams’ little book of brilliant essays. Not to be missed.