July 8, 2013

The Squirrel's Humongous Cousin

The groundhog is the largest member of the squirrel family. It's also called a woodchuck or whistle pig.
Marmota monax
I took this picture through a window that had a screen in it, so I'm glad it came out as well as it did.

Looks like this fellow has been eating plenty of clover! I hope he doesn't find his way to our vegetable garden! A fence won't keep him out because he likes to dig holes. Because of his size (almost 2 feet long), he could destroy our garden pretty quickly.

Some people eat groundhog meat. I never have but I've heard it's greasy. I suppose a poor farmer might see justice in eating the groundhog who decimated his garden!


6 comments:

  1. That little (big) critter looks well fed. Good shot.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wouldn't have guess its 2 ft!!

    when I was a kid, I did tried squirrel meat without knowing what it is..dad bought it from a restaurant

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have always loved ground hogs. My papaw hated them though lol he said they always ate stuff out of his garden :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. i've seen a blogger post about having to trap them because they decimated a whole corner of their corn field crop!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I don't like having those around. They really can do a lot of damage.

    ReplyDelete

The View from Squirrel Ridge features thousands of views of the Shenandoah Valley and surrounding area. I post frequently so please visit often.

Your comments are appreciated. If you are responding to a post older than a few days, your comment will be held until we have a chance to approve it. Thanks for your patience!

Sorry, anonymous comments cannot be accepted because of the large number of spam comments that come in that way. Also, links that are ads will be deleted.