The Groundhog People
Several years ago a groundhog made her spring and summer home in a burrow beneath my deck. There she raised her babies, and I had the joy of watching them from behind my door, just a few feet away.
At the time I didn’t know much about groundhogs. I soon found that much had been written about their natural history, and even more about getting rid of them—but there was little about their social lives. Almost invariably groundhogs were described as solitary.
Eventually I learned about Christine Maher, a biologist who has spent more than twenty years observing a groundhog community in Falmouth, Maine. She’s found them to be rather more social than the stereotype. I wrote about her for the New York Times—it’s a favorite—and in passing mentioned another resource: Woodchuck Wonderland, the project of Susan and Joseph Sam, a couple who have likewise spent much of the last couple decades chronicling the lives of the groundhogs (AKA woodchucks) around their rural Michigan home.
Unlike Maher, however, the Sams are not biologists. They’re just a couple of regular people who were fascinated by a little-known animal and decided to watch them with uncommon attentiveness. They’re a delight, and it was a delight to write about them last month for Nautilus.
Not everything I wanted to put in the article could fit, though, and I’d like to present here this full passage from my interview with Joe. Like Susan he’s in his later years, a product of a cultural moment very different from our own, which makes it all the more moving:
When it all started out, I actually was most apprehensive. Because I had the typical knowledge that most people get of woodchucks: They’re going to dig holes, ruin your lawn, eat your vegetables and your flowers, and cause your buildings to fall down. And so when the chuck showed up, and Suzy said, “What is this?”, I told her. And she said, “Well, what do they do?” And I told her what I had been told. And she said, “Well, I don’t know about that.” I said, “I don’t know about keeping them here. I think we should go ahead and drive them off.”
But she said, “No, I want to watch it for a little while.” Well, she started going to the library and getting all kinds of material on them. And she says to me, “Joe, what they’re saying in these books and what I’m seeing here are two different things.”
Well, I’ve always tried to back Susie and the things that she’s wanted to do. Because it seems to me that quite often a lot of men may discourage their wives from broadening their horizons. For one reason or another, you known, insecurities, whatever. And not that I don’t have my fair share of them, but I can’t retard her growth as a human because of my insecurities.
So as a result I said, “Well, okay, we’ll let this play out a little farther and see what happens.”
That was back in 2003. Joe would become Susan’s assistant, helping track their furry charges and doing the physical work of fencing off flowerbeds they want to protect (though usually they’ll let the groundhogs eat them later in summer) and filling holes dug in inconvenient places (but only when necessary! And only when they’re absolutely certain they’re not trapping anyone inside.)
The project also took on a deeper significance for Joe:
I found that it was much easier for me to assist her than to try and discourage her. Pretty soon I found out that the things I believed to be true [about woodchucks] were not. There was just a lot of fallacies surrounding them. And so it became very important to me to help her get this story out there. And now I’m as involved in the woodchucks as she is. I think all creatures have a right to life.
Granted, because I was a warrior in Vietnam, I conducted myself in ways that weren’t necessarily conducive to that. But that was war. So as a result, I’ve done what I could to ensure that life on our property has a chance to thrive.
Joe is a pretty special person. So is Susan. You can read my Nautilus story here and learn more about the Sams’ observations at their website. Their books are also excellent resources for groundhog-curious people! And I’m tempted to get this Little Limper tote bag for myself.
Lovely Facts
On a related and adorable note, the first evidence of tool use in skunks came in 2018 from a suburban nature-lover with a backyard trail camera that captured a skunk using a stone to break the ice in a water bowl.
And as we’re in the midst of one last cold snap here in Maine, and are about to get an early-spring snowstorm, it’s a timely moment to consider that some winter-active spiders consume fermented tree sap when food is otherwise scarce.
“From a behavioral point of view,” wrote the researchers who made that observation, “it would be of interest to find out whether consumption of fermented plant sap containing alcohols is altering the spiders’ behavior, as is known in some insects (e.g., ants and wasps) who may lose control of their coordination after getting intoxicated.”
Do spiders get tipsy? Material for a future article.
In Memoriam
I also wrote something for Nautilus that I wish I didn’t have to write at all: A remembrance of Steven Wise, founder of the Nonhuman Rights Project, whose lawsuit seeking freedom for a captive elephant named Happy is the subject of a chapter in Meet the Neighbors.
What is a person?
Is it determined by what someone is able to think, feel, and do? Or by something else, such as the category into which they were born?
This is a profound question, central to how we see ourselves and the rest of the living world. Steven Wise, who passed away last week at the age of 73 from brain cancer, devoted his life to it.
I met Steve back in 2008. At the time I hadn’t thought much about the mess of arbitrary, inconsistent, and self-serving norms—both legal and cultural—that shape our treatment of animals. Neither did I share his ethics. But the brilliance of Steve’s arguments was compelling; they appealed to bedrock moral principles and plain common sense. Beyond that, he was a kind and gracious and generous man. He is missed.
Until next time,
Brandon
