Meet George

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Everyone, this is George. George, this is everyone!  George is our resident Groundhog.  Or at least this year’s resident Groundhog. 

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When we moved into our house 15 years ago, we first encountered George.  Of course we did not know he was George, but everyone else seemed to know he was George.  And since I don’t know how long Groundhogs live, I am guessing that this is at least a descendant of one or the other previous Georges that have been around.

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When Keith & I first spotted him, we told our neighbor Bill about him and he replied, “Oh, that’s just George.”  And so we now had a garden critter named George.  Bill told us that George had been around pretty much forever and that we need not worry, “he didn’t eat much.”

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Well, that first year we found out the George did eat and had a very healthy appetite, especially for expensive flowers.  Keith & I had planted 36 White Garden Phlox (the tall kind that butterflies love) and I looked out the window one day and saw him mowing them down like a lawn mower.  He had eaten about a third of them. Not more than a week later, they were all just stubs.  Evidently they were a delicacy that he thoroughly enjoyed.

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A few weeks later we noticed the stubs were growing again, so all was not lost.  We dug them up and put them closer to the house and they have happily thrived and multiplied.  The spot we moved them from was now a bare, ugly spot in the yard so I bought a flat of marigolds to plant there so that I could at least have something pretty to look at.  Well, a few days later George even ate those to the ground.  They did not survive like the Phlox.  Lesson learned.  Don’t by flowers for George to eat.

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After that we tried our hand at vegetable gardening, knowing that we would have to protect the garden from George, so we built a fence.  Well, one day while looking out the window at the kitchen sink I watched George climb the fence and happily dig into a pumpkin, ruining it for all eternity.  Then we tried all kinds of concoctions to keep him away, like making our own pepper sprays, fox urine, you name it.  I did not have the heart to do anything like poison or trapping.  George needs to eat, too, you know, but just not my flowers or pumpkins.  And then the next spring, there were babies.  And two adult groundhogs which we named George and Georgette.  Who can tell the difference?  We surely could not.  We figured if we saw the lone Groundhog it was George and if we saw and adult with babies it was Georgette.

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Finally we just gave in.  We don’t have a vegetable garden anymore, we have herbs there now, which if George eats, he eats sparingly.  We have learned to leave a few areas a little rough around the edges of the yard and think that probably helps sustain George now.  But this year, George seems to be living under our deck, which is  unusual.  We knew where his den was, it was at the bottom of the hill in the back yard, near an area we call the Jungle (where the deer hang out, too.)  We have seen him quite a bit this spring and summer, always around the deck.  And if he feels threatened, he runs under the deck, hence our thinking that maybe he now lives “uptown.”

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Or maybe he has dug a tunnel from the den down below to up here under the deck, you know, a secret passageway of sorts.  Who knows?  At this point, only George knows.  We haven’t got the courage yet to follow him under the deck to find out for sure.  Maybe some day.