e is
within, presumably asleep half the summer long. The young
woodchucks at this time of year are more often seen abroad, for
the parents send them forth upon the world to earn their own
living at a rather tender age. They roam the fields and thickets
and do not seem especially afraid of man, scuttling into the
underbrush perhaps with their whistling squeal, but just as likely
to sit back on their haunches and offer to fight. The mortality
among them at this time must be great. Foxes pick them up and feed
them to their own young. Hawks and owls do the same and dogs find
them an easy prey. But enough get by such dangers to dig burrows
in the fall and next spring move up to somebody's garden patch,
there to absorb feasts and defy fates until the outraged
householder stalks forth and deals death amid the ruins of his
hopes. The woodchuck sitting by his burrow in the far pasture is a
friendly little chap, whom I wish well. I would not harm a hair of
him. But the woodchuck that has adopted suburban life is a menace
of whom I am forced to say in the words of Cato of old "Delenda
est Carthago."

The forefathers found the woodchuck here, probably in the first
spring garden which they planted over the graves of the dead in
Plymouth, saw how much he had eaten and promptly named him, his
name meaning "little pig of the woods." Chuck or chuckie is a word
of their time, and I dare say now, meaning "little pig." The idea
is again expressed in the rather less polite form of "ground hog"
and the hereabouts at least, little known "Maryland marmot" is a
third. Scientifically he is known as Arctomys monax, being a
rodent and classed with the marmots, very close relatives of the
squirrels. Perhaps it is through this family affinity that he is
able to climb my bean poles.

The woodchuck has one other distinguishing characteristic which
deserves reference, that is his ability as a sleeper. As a home
body he is great. As an absorber of garden truck he is greater.
But when the sun of October swings low in the south and he has
become so fat that he seems to roll to and from his burrow on
castors is when he shows his most surprising characteristic. Mr.
Wardle's fat boy with all his fame never slept as the woodchuck
then prepares to sleep, however well he matched his eating. The
first chill wind sets him to dragging dry leaves and grass down
into the snuggest chamber of his burrow and there a little later
he tucks his nose in between his li