Good Morning 2012!

Man! Back from a good winter's sleep! Always nice to wake up in a new year, ya know? I mean you humans blow some horns, throw some confetti, kiss some chick you've beer goggled late into the night and then finally bed down drunkenly on New Year's eve for a few hours sleep before waking to a hangover and the day off from work. Not much there compared to groundhog life. First we spend a couple weeks stuffing ourselves silly — I mean eating everything we can, puttin' on the winter weight — then we drag a few fresh leaves into the burrow to make a nice warm bed for the winter and finally we climb into bed for a great four month sleep! Man, what a treat! Nothing like sleeping in. Oh and waking up? That's awesome too. Talk about the morning munchies? Whew, when I get up mommy need to feed! This year I got the munchies around April 13th and started scouting around the back entrance for some grub. But it wasn't the good stuff around the front entrance, so on April 26th I started cleaning out the front entrance and found my way to the tasty-clover that grows there.  Here's a couple pics:

Now if the human would just cut the dang grass and get a better camera we can get on with the grubbin'!

Everyone... Eddie

Here's another pic from July 5th.  This is Eddie standing up for inspection and you can see that he is looking very well developed for a three month old groundhog. Admire them fingers and claws which he uses to dig burrows and climb trees.

Sleepin Like the Dead

PJ got in the habit of catchin' a few Zzzz outside the burrow on warm afternoons this summer (this was July 5th). Not a very wise practice for groundhogs that don't want to end up in a hawk's bill. But what was even more disturbing was how dead he looked!  I had a mini heart attack every time I'd look outside and see him laying there like roadkill.

In fact, it turned out that PJ would sleep just about anywhere. Here he is sleepin' on a cool concrete slab a few feet from the burrow entrance:

Hawkeye

I just found these pictures from July 8th. While I was photographing Eddie poking around on  the ground and climbing a tree a short distance, I noticed a movement in the trees and upon looking up I saw this hawk watching Eddie the way a fat man watches fried chicken cookin'. I snapped a couple of pics and opened the door to get closer and that hawk took off in an instant! I was surprised that he didn't hang around at least as long at the deer and groundhogs do considering he was in far less danger from me being 25 feet up in a tree. But I guess his sense of survival is more developed then the ground dwellers.

Why would anyone want to eat this cute little guy?

Dang Dawn

I had a half hour staring contest with Dawn the Deer today. I noticed she was in the back yard staring at Toby so I opened the screen door and sat and watched them stare at each other. I think Dawn wanted to play but Toby wasn't interested. Dawn stayed just on the opposite side of Toby's invisible fence. Smart deer. I had some left over feed corn from making cornhole bags a few years ago so I took some out and poured it by a tree. Dawn let me get pretty close before she took off running. But she came back a few minutes later and gobbled up the corn while keeping and eye on Toby and me. :)

Staring contest. It was a draw.

Having a little corn for a tasty dietary change.

The Boys Are Back in Town

Howdy All!

Man it has been a long time since I posted!  It has been a long hot summer and the boys of spring have been in hiding.  I haven't seen Booker and the boys all of July and August!  I was beginning to think they had moved off and found new homes. Which would have been very sad. However this evening I saw two of them hanging out by the burrow entrance! And they were HUGE! i think the boys are bigger than Booker now! At just 5 months old!
   Sadly, I raced around looking for a camera and found that none were charged.  I had to take a pic using my camera phone which is pretty poor for this sort of thing, but here's what I got:

   I know you can't tell their size in this fuzzy pic, but I'm charging up the cameras and hopefully will be able to get a clearer pic in the next couple of days. Exciting times!  =)

Guillermo Peanut Stuffin'

I put a few peanuts out for Guillermo to enjoy this morning and the funniest thing happened!  He tried to get all three of them in his mouth at the same time!  Check out the progression of peanuts into his cheeks in this set of pictures:

Before Peanuts:

He gave up trying to get that third peanut into his mouth.  He must have thought he was being selfish so he left it behind for his friend Billy Bluejay who promptly swooped in and picked it up.

Chipmunks like Guillermo are really small, about the size of a child's hand, so they don't like to be out in the open where birds and other animals can see them.  So when they get tasty snacks like peanuts, they stuff them into their mouths and run off to a secret place like a tree house or a fort.  Then they'll take them out of their mouths and hold them in their hands while biting off the shell to get to the nuts inside.