We don’t see him every year. Or that often when we do. He is elusive and fearful and seems to know when he is being watched and scurries away. Last year I don’t recall seeing him at all.
In reality he is probably here all the time with a burrow on the wooded part of the ranch. We just don’t see him because he is FAST and shy. He will show up for a few days or maybe a week or two and then go about his groundhog business elsewhere.
The long-suffering wife named him “badgie” or maybe I did. He is definitely not a badger but he needed a name and Phil was taken.
The picture was taken from the kitchen window in 2008, three years ago. He is poking his head out on the wooden sidewalk that abuts the Hosta, which he likes for an appetizer. While we don’t know how old he was when he posed for the photo he is getting to be a senior citizen in groundhog years. The critters can live six years in the wild so he is at least 4, more likely 5. If it is the same beast, and I think it is, he has become much more grey in color, seems a bit thinner and if possible, even cagier, as I was unable to snap a picture of Badgie 2011.
Most of the Badgie sightings have him in full speed across the back yard:
The LSW does not like him. She fears him and his claws and teeth. I don’t think he is much of a threat but I encourage him to do his foraging elsewhere. He is so skittish that usually just opening the kitchen door will send him away in a hurry. It’s a big ranch and he can find any number of places to munch the foliage without using our deck or yard.
In my younger, darker years I would have cheerfully shot him before he had grown grey. Now I don’t even own a gun, much less the resolve to point it at a living thing and send lead on it’s way.
Yesterday I spared a spider.
I grow older, but wiser? Not sure.
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Rant D’Jour Is about the difference between doctors and Disc Jockeys.
It’s OK to bribe doctors but don’t try to get a song played on the radio by using any coercion…more
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