My Friend the Groundhog

I suppose it was inevitable. We live off in the country. Denisa has a thriving garden each year. Sooner or later, a groundhog was going to find us and start going to town on those tasty veggies.

At first, Denisa thought it was some kind of beetle, or slugs. Something was eating the tops of her broccoli and carrots. She asked around for different ideas about how to deal with it–and then she saw it.

The groundhog in flagrante delicto.

She came inside to complain to me, and I think I wasn’t quite as compassionate and enraged as I ought to have been. My response? “Woo hoo! Our yearly summoning ritual finally paid off. The groundhog has appeared!”

She didn’t think it was as amusing as I did.

In any case, my vote that we encourage the groundhog and keep him as a family mascot or pet was vetoed down quite quickly. Maybe I’d have been better off channeling a  certain Bill Murray + groundhog movie scene. (Maybe not one you’re thinking of.) “I’ve got to get inside this guy’s pelt and crawl around for a couple of days.”

And how about this scene? “We can do that. We don’t even have to have a reason.”

Yeah . . . We’ll see where this goes from here.