Woodchucks

(October 14, 2023 — This post was originally published in 2014. For whatever reason, I had made it private some years ago. Now it’s back.)

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.”

I’ve been known to perform worm rescues when I see them squirming on the sidewalk.

I rather like cool days. (Cool, not cold.)

But woodchucks — yes. I’m thinking about declaring war on woodchucks.

Yesterday, Helen and I were talking in my parents’ kitchen when we both started looking around.

“Did you hear that?” Helen asked.

It sounded like someone was coming in through the side door. We heard it a couple more times, but could find no explanation for the noise. I shrugged it off as a quirk of a very old house.

Later, I was sitting on their sun porch and heard a different odd noise, like the furnace kicking on with a rattle of the metal air vents.  The heat yesterday was not from my father’s furnace, I knew that. After a few more clanks and rumbles, I decided to investigate.

I was halfway down the cellar stairs when a massive woodchuck, pretty much the King Kong of woodchucks, ran across the dirt floor at the bottom of the stairs and disappeared into the shadows.

Once my heart started beating again, I went back upstairs to find a flashlight. Crazy, I know, but I wondered where it could have gone. Suffice it to say that, upon further investigation and based on the noises I heard, there was more than one woodchuck in the basement.

“Dad, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you,” I told my father, and then informed him of the presence of woodchucks in the basement.

“I kind of want to see them,” he said, and went to the top of the cellar stairs. With the door open and the light on below, he stood and watched. Nothing happened. He began sorting through papers while he watched, got sidetracked, and left the door open.

I ran an errand in town and came back 15 minutes later to learn that the woodchuck was now in the living room. I kid you not.

He was hiding behind the woodstove.

It must have been Behemoth’s offspring. This version was considerably smaller.

Still. A woodchuck in the living room?!

With a little teamwork, we got him out from behind the woodstove, but then he raced behind the piano.

We finally got him to scamper out the front door.

Still, I worry about the giant in the basement.

My brother says, “If he got in, he can get out.”

Yeah, but, what if he’s taking up residence there?

Thoreau’s stated enemies — worms, cool days, woodchucks — are in the context of growing beans. Still, I wonder what he would have said about a woodchuck in his house.