I Have a Groundchuck!

Well, really it's a groundhog, but my friend Juli has always called them "Groundchucks" (cross between a groundhog and a woodchuck), and it's just stuck. My groundchuck is fat and brown and about the size of my cat (only she's fat and grey).

This is not a good thing!

Just before I started my vacation, I noticed that something was nibbling on my peas, but only the peas. I didn't really think much about it, because nothing else had been touched and I was going on vacation - I had other things to think about.

When I came back from vacation, I had the dog out on her run and she was flipping out next to my shed. She ran to the side, she ran round the front, she tried desperately to dig under it. I couldn't figure out why, other than maybe there was a cat hiding under it. Then I noticed that most of my peapod plants had been ripped down from their little trellis and pulled out onto the lawn! But again, only the peas. But I knew, I just knew and across from the garden (nowhere near the shed) I saw the hole. About a foot high, it had been dug out just under the landscape timbers that hold in the hill where my raspberry patch is.

Last night, I noticed that a few leaves to cukes have been munched, one of my tomato plants trompled and the tops to some of my carrots nipped off! It never seems to fail, grow a garden and the groundchuck will appear. I haven't had a veggie garden in two years and coincidentally (or rather not, since I don't believe in coincidence), there have been no groundchuck sitings at my house. This morning, Sadie sat on the back of the couch, looking out the back window and low growling (which sounds like a low rumble under her breathe). I thought she was watching a cat, but there he was...fat and brown and sassy, eating grass by my grill like he hadn't a care in the world! Well that did it, a call has already been placed to the brother for a "Have-a-Heart" trap.

That little brown garden wrecker is outta here!