NO MORE WINTER!!!

Freakin' groundhogs. Who needs 'em. Or their six more bloody weeks of winter.


When I was 11, I went groundhog hunting in the Pennsylvania countryside with a step-uncle. We spotted one of the little buggers poking his head out of a hole in an alfalfa field, so we laid low until he put a little distance between himself and that hole, my uncle with it in his sights all the while. One of us must have twitched (probably me), as the critter started running across the field, so my uncle opened fire, missing a couple of times, and then getting an apparent hit. I remember vividly that it was an off-center gut shot, as the groundhog spun around from the momentum of the bullet (clockwise, his nose and tail remaining fairly still, while his legs circled around his body) only to land on his feet again and take a few more steps before falling over to apparent demise.

This all happened maybe seventy-five to a hundred yards away, so it was a bit of a walk (for an eleven year-old) over to the deceased rodent. When we arrived at the scene, his guts were hanging out the side of his body, and he was definitely deceased, though not quite stone cold. That was probably the grossest thing I'd seen to that point in my life. But it got worse. My uncle made me carry the groundhog by the tail all the way back to his house, oozing guts and all. I have no idea how long a walk it was, or how heavy that thing was to my little arms, but I remember that it sucked real bad. And I remember trying with all my might to avoid swaying the creature in a manner that might smear its guts on me. I also remember some of the guts inching further towards the ground, much in the way a kid might let a string of spit hang, nearly touching the ground, before being sucked back up (a la Adam Sandler's Big Daddy). Only no one was going to suck these guts up.

When we got to my uncle's house, we proceeded to gut (what was left) and skin the groundhog. But I can only guess that my uncle ate that groundhog for supper some night thereafter. My mother, sister, and I were only visiting our in-laws for a short time, and we didn't participate in any groundhog consumption during that visit.

But... every groundhog day since then, when that darn Phil character in another part of Pennsylvania goes and sees his shadow in apparent foretelling of additional winter weeks to come... I ponder my experience with his (hopefully) distant cousin, and wish I could extend a similar courtesy to Mr. Phil as well.



(post story editorial comment... that came out a lot more gruesome than originally conceived upon my reflections of this day of hogging ground)