Click to Enlarge     Check 'em out! by Bonnie Chasteen Listen to "Check 'em out!" (1.4 MB) Designed for watching and digging Take a look at that head. The nose, eyes and ears line up along the top of the skull. This makes it easy for a groundhog to smell, see and hear danger without raising its head too far out of its burrow. With their short, stout legs, squatty bodies and wide, flat, flexible paws, groundhogs are furcovered, earth-moving machines. They can move hundreds of pounds of dirt to make a burrow system. Picky eater, sun worshipper Groundhogs have flexible, hand-like paws. They use them to move dirt and pick plants. Often they will sit and hold their food in their paws, looking like fat little men eating sandwiches. In the summer, when they’re not eating, they’re lying in the sun. Sometimes you can see whole families basking in the sun, especially along rocky stream banks. Whistle while they work True to many of their common names (see sidebar), groundhogs can whistle, grunt, chuckle, growl and snarl. They use these sounds to express surprise, sound alarms and repel attacks. Some observers claim groundhogs can sing like canaries, but we can’t get a Conservation Department wildlife biologist to confirm that. Triathletes Groundhogs cannot only make a mad dash for their dens when danger threatens, they can also climb trees and swim. Pretty impressive athletics for such fat, low-slung rodents! Clean house Groundhogs are good housekeepers. They line their dens with fluffy, dried grass. They bury their poop with a layer of dirt in a separate bathroom. Fable a Foreign Import Listen to "Fable a Foreign Import" (572 KB) If groundhogs don’t get up until spring, why do we still celebrate Groundhog day on february 2nd? Sheer force of tradition. Hundreds of years ago in Europe, people celebrated candlemas on february 2nd. on that day they prayed for nice weather for the rest of the winter. They believed that, if a badger woke up and saw its shadow on candlemas, there would be six more weeks of bad weather. Apparently European settlers thought American groundhogs looked a lot like old world badgers, and they appointed the groundhog their new winter weather forecaster. Woodchuck or Bulldozer? Listen to "Woodchuck or Bulldozer?" (520 KB) So how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? About 700 pounds. This is according to one wildlife biologist who measured the inside area of a typical woodchuck burrow and estimated that, if wood had filled the hole instead of dirt, the woodchuck would have had to chuck about 700 pounds’ worth to dig it out. Maybe we should call groundhogs bulldozers instead of woodchucks.