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By GERALD S. HAWKINS
Rappahannock News Contributing Writer
I never saw a woodchuck until I came to Virginia. I knew from book learning that these fat, black-nosed animals lived in deep burrows, were better known as groundhogs, had evil teeth and claws, and came up to look at their shadow on the 2nd of February. People who knew about these things told me: “Nobody loves a woodchuck, not even its mother.” The mother pushes its young offsprings out ot the burrow to fend for themselves when they are about a month old.
For a while I tolerated their digging and damaging in the fields. I even turned a blind eye to a 20pound woodchuck that wallowed in a hole under the cherry trees near the house. But when this beast ate the melons my wife, Julia, had planted, I declared war. I caught it in a one of these have-a-heart traps, and took it off to a new home. My friends laughed when I said the ’chuck ran off in the direction of the farm, but I really don’t think it made it back, because the release point was a good five miles away.
I filled in the burrow with stones and soil, and it stayed that way all winter long. Next spring, though, the hole was opened up again. Once more I set the trap, baited with an ear of sweet com and waited a week, ten days, a fortnight.
One afternoon, as I walked through the brush to the cage, I could see that the trap door was closed. Success: I knew how to get rid of woodchucks! But this was a very black woodchuck, not the usual bristly gray-brown. The creature was curled up in a nest of dry grass behind the bars. It had black, beady eyes, soft fur, and white on its tail. This was no woodchuck, this was a full-grown striped skunk!
Saint Patrick rid Ireland of
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