How much wood?

For the past two days, we've had a new visitor in our yard. This little guy is know variously as Woodchuck, Groundhog, Marmot, and Whistling Pig. This one is probably at the upper limit in total length - around two feet. The first day, we spied him crawling under the car. Today, he was outside the dining room, under and around the pine tree downed by the April tornado.


With all the trees downed, both by the April tornado and those we had cut down both before and after the tornado, it would be nice if they really chucked wood. Unfortunately, it appears this creature mainly eats grass and clover. But we have plenty of clover (the second picture was captured while he was eating the clover outside the dining room window).

The name woodchuck has nothing to do with wood or chucking. It comes from the Algonquian name for the animal, "wuchak".

The woodchuck is a burrowing animal. Given the concrete hardness of the ground here and how rocky it is, I wonder how this one dug any burrows.

From what I've read, they can move around 35 cubic feet of dirt when digging a burrow. With two to five entrances, the woodchuck's burrow can have 45 feet of tunnels.


One of the reasons it is called a whistling pig is that, when alarmed, a woodchuck will use a high-pitched whistle to alert the colony.