It was the second day of February. The ground was covered with snow that had fallen wet and had frozen over the top. The sky was blue, the sunshine was bright, and the clean frozen snow sparkled like millions of diamonds.
Uncle John came into the kitchen, after stamping the snow off his feet. Aunt Mary was just beginning to put the dinner on the table.
“Six more weeks of winter,” said Uncle John. “The ground hog certainly saw his shadow today.”
“That’s so,” said Aunt Mary. “I had forgotten that this is ground-hog day.”
“What is a ground hog?” asked Albert. “And why did he see his shadow this morning?”
Albert had never lived on a farm till that winter. Just before Christmas his mother had been very ill, and the doctor had said that she must go south for a long stay. So Albert had come to live with Aunt Mary and Uncle John while she was away.
“A ground hog is just the same as a woodchuck,” said Uncle John.
“What is a woodchuck?” asked Albert.
“That’s so, you don’t know about woodchucks, do you?” replied Uncle John. “I had forgotten, you didn’t come till after all the woodchucks were in their holes. You’ll see many of them in the summer. The pasture lot is full of them, and they give us much trouble in the garden. A family of woodchucks can eat almost as many cabbages and turnips as a family of people.”
Albert still was puzzled. “How do you know we are going to have six more weeks of winter?” he asked.
Uncle John laughed. “That’s an old saying,” he said. “I suppose people have been saying that ever since white men first came to this country.
“You see, the woodchucks sleep all winter. They don’t have to eat then. They eat so much during the summer that they become very fat. By November they are as fat as butter balls. So they curl up in their nests in the ground and sleep till warm weather comes again.
“There is an old belief that the ground hog always wakes up and comes out of his winter home at noon on the second day of February. If the sun is shining so that he sees his shadow, he thinks it will be cold and stormy later, and he goes back to bed for six weeks. So, when the sun shines at noon on the second of February, folks say there will be six weeks more of winter.”
“Is that true?” asked Albert.
“No, to be sure, it is not true,” said Uncle John, “even though almost everybody does say so. But one thing is sure, the woodchucks don’t come out to stay till the snow is melted and the ground is warming up.”
It was about two months after that when Albert first saw a woodchuck. Spring had come, the air was warm and sweet, the wheat fields were bright green. The grass in the rocky pasture was green, too, and so was the clover in the field near by.
Albert was sitting very still on a big stone by the roadside. Suddenly he saw something on the other side of the road. At first he thought it was a rabbit.
Albert looked closely at its forefeet and legs. Its forefeet were black, with long claws. Its legs were short and thick. The brown hair on them grew down to a place just above its black paws. The paws looked like black hands sticking out of brown fur sleeves.
Albert sat very still, because he did not know what kind of animal it was. He thought it might be a little bear. He was afraid it would run across the road and jump at him.
Just then the woodchuck saw Albert. It gave several low, short whistles, and dropped into its hole. It was more frightened than Albert had been.
The little boy saw the old woodchuck often that summer. Its hole was under the stone wall. Sometimes it climbed up on the wall, and lay in the sun.
The woodchuck liked to lie on the wall. From there he could see up and down the road. If he saw anybody coming, he would scramble down and into his hole in a hurry.
But it was hard for the old fellow to stay inside the hole long at a time. He had too much curiosity. If anybody came up quietly and whistled, the woodchuck would raise his head out of the hole to see who was there.
The rocky pasture on the other side of the stone wall was a fine place for woodchucks. There were many holes among heaps of rock. In the little woods beyond the pasture the woodchucks had made good hiding places under the roots of old stumps and trees.
Best of all, there were many good places for burrows in the sloping hillside. A woodchuck that had his home there could look out of his front door, and see a long way across the pasture. A home there was dry, too. The rain water would not settle into the burrow there as it would in a level field.
Albert saw many woodchucks that summer. Sometimes they were sitting up like rabbits, looking all about to see what was going on. Sometimes they were nibbling on grass or clover that grew near their burrows.
Now and then a woodchuck stole into Uncle John’s garden and ate the heart out of a cabbage. Of course, Uncle John and Aunt Mary did not like that. So whenever Albert saw a woodchuck in the garden, he called Scamp, his dog. Scamp chased the woodchuck back to its burrow.
Albert and Scamp had some lively times chasing woodchucks. Once Scamp almost caught the big woodchuck that had frightened Albert in the spring. Albert and the dog were in the pasture. The woodchuck was eating clover, and did not see them until the dog was very close to him.
Worse still for the woodchuck, Scamp was between it and its hole. The woodchuck gave its three or four short sharp whistles, and then made a noise as though its teeth were chattering. Woodchucks will fight when they cannot get away. They have big, strong teeth as sharp as a chisel. They fight a dog by trying to bite his nose.
This time the woodchuck showed its teeth and ran at Scamp. The dog leaped to one side, and the woodchuck got past him. Had it run on toward its hole Scamp would have caught it. Instead it turned and faced the dog again. Showing its big, sharp teeth, it backed slowly toward its hole. Scamp was jumping at it and barking all the time.
Scamp got between the woodchuck and its hole, again, and again the woodchuck whistled and ran at the dog. So they kept on, till the woodchuck had backed all the way to its front door. Just as the dog made another rush at the little animal, it turned and dashed into its hole, out of reach.
Albert got a stick and poked it into the opening of the woodchuck’s nest but he could not make the little animal come out. Once woodchucks get into their holes, they are fairly safe. They dig their holes a long way under the ground. At the entrance each hole slopes down two and a half or three feet, and then up part way, something like the letter U. From here on, there is a long tunnel with little halls branching from each side of it.
The U at the entrance keeps the rain water from getting into the living room. The branching halls make good hiding places. There is a little room at the end of one hall. Sometimes there are several little rooms, each made at the end of a hall.
These rooms are lined with grass and leaves. They are cozy homes for the woodchucks’ babies. They are good places for the older woodchucks to stay in, too, when the weather is bad or it is not safe outside.
Some of the halls open out above the ground. Woodchucks have back doors as well as front doors to their houses. It is not safe for them to have only one way to get in and out.
Nguồn: Wikisource English — By the Roadside (Dunn and Troxell)/A Woodchuck at Home. Văn bản được nhập và định dạng lại; CC BY-SA 4.0, có thể áp dụng điều khoản bổ sung của tác phẩm.