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A Whistle-Pig Love Story
One whistle-pig is enough, thank you
Our younger daughter calls groundhogs “whistle-pigs”, which is just one of their many names: groundhogs, woodchucks, whistle-pigs, land-beavers, wuchak (Native American Algonquian), or Marmota monax if you must. They are marmots, relatives of squirrels, if you believe Wikipedia.
She (our daughter) recently sent us a video of the whistle-pig presently living under her porch, which reminded me of a relative who lived under our shed back when our daughter was barely larger than a whistle-pig.
A relative of her whistle-pig, not a relative of ours. We’ve had relatives live in our garage, which sounds awful but we had gussied it up as a bedroom, small living room, and slightly cramped bathroom. It was quite nice, actually.
The shed was not so nice, being one of those prebuilt jobs that the fencing guy up by the highway sold. We used it to store lawnmowers and rakes and stuff like that. That’s no place for distressed relatives to be accommodated.
No place for a whistle-pig either, what with the gasoline smells from the gas mower. We wouldn’t have had that smelly thing if the battery mower was strong enough to cut taller grass or wet grass. But it wasn’t. That’s nothing to do with the whistle-pig: I didn’t…
