Unlike pigeons and sparrows, which are chiefly known as mere “exploiters” of the urban environment, groundhogs are seen as engineers that add something more than their leavings to the urban wildlife village every time they build a den.
Timothy Swartz, assistant professor of biology at Wittenberg University, said that just as the squirrels he studied for his doctoral degree contribute to the habitat by planting acorns that will become trees, groundhogs create “a really unique habitat that no one else could build.”
In doing so, he said, they not only create living spaces they and others occupy for years but lifesaving Vrbo-like rentals in which “rabbits and foxes and skunks hide from a coyote or a dog.”
The proof is in images of those animals taken by cameras his urban ecology students plant in groundhog dens around Springfield.
But like all real estate matters involving every species, the key issue involving groundhog homes, condos and apartments is their proximity to human homes, condos and apartments — to put it another way: location, location and location.
“Every time I see one, my back fur goes up and I start to growl."
In the clover
Bill Murray, Andy McDowell and Harold Ramis’s Groundhog Day is the established holiday classic. But the gopher-obsessed Murray character of Caddy Shack came to mind in December when I overheard two friends swapping groundhog war stories.
Says the friend I’ll here call Hog Hater 1: “Every time I see one, my back fur goes up and I start to growl.”
While he did not give off a distinct smell after making the comment, it was the first time in 49 years of reporting in which I recall a person making mention of his own “back fur.” It seemed to clearly indicate this as territorial issue between competing species.
Professor Swartz put his finger on the reason: “They like what we like,” which is “grass, especially clover.”
Enter Hog Hater 2, my other groundhog-fighting friend, who seems still in search of a rehab program that can ween himself from the habit of cultivating clover in his back yard even though he’s fully aware it will have groundhogs peering into his glassed-in back patio.
“I do it for the pollinators,” he says, but when spring comes, groundhogs emerge from hibernation to build Residents for Rodentia, the Habitat for Humanity equivalent for the Sciuridae family of rodents, squirrels and relatives.
In addition to the groundhog the clan includes “our gray squirrel and our fox squirrel and the chipmunk,” said Swartz.
The floor plans of the groundhog den “usually have a separate winter area for hibernation,” Swartz said, along with “three or four different burrow areas that are separate for raising young or sleeping. ”I neglected to inquire about full- and half-baths.
So that the dens are less likely to be death traps during predatory invasions, the dens are built with distinct entrances and exits. And, for the extra protection and stability afforded, they are often snugged up to human-made habitations.
He Shed, She Shed
Hog Hater 2, who leads his neighborhood’s groundhog watch, rightly describes the animal as an equal opportunity destroyer of patios, garages, barns and porches. All of those are at risk to collapse if a groundhog undermines (or mines under) them.
His back fur rose when he realized the animals might collapse the structure and value of the upscale “He Shed” he had paid Mennonite builders place at the back of his property to hold lawn and garden equipment and tools.
That he put “three grand in a shed with 2-by-six tongue-in-groove flooring” seems to confirm his claim that when planning it, “I didn’t expect to have groundhogs in town, I really didn’t.
“But all of a sudden, there they were. What do you do? Well, you deal with it.”
Something of an engineer himself, his clever solution was to dig a small, neat trench around the base of the He Shed and add wrap-around wire mesh under the edge of the shed and a short distance up the side walls.
The wire is clearly stout enough to resist the paws and gnaws of groundhogs yearning for a taste of tongue-in-groove craftsmanship.
Like his brother in neck fur, Hog Hater 1 hadn’t expected have issues with groundhogs when he moved into his Springfield home.
“I could see signs where they had been, “he said, “but the first few years, we never saw them.”
The likely reason that Mr. and Ms. Hog Hater 1 had a dog when they moved in.
The year after it died, the only predator pressure on the groundhogs was from automobiles, which seldom hunt in Hater 1’s back yard.
As a result, “We had, like, half a dozen holes around the property,” along with “these huge piles of dirt” near the entrances and exits of the dens.
A detail here: Swartz said there exists and thin but well-defined rural-suburban border at which coyote predation ends and feral cat predation begins. It also tends to be the place where groundhogs get busier because feral cats aren’t nearly as much of a threat.
Death traps
Hater 1 started his groundhog interdiction program with a live trap, he said, “but then I found out it was illegal” to release wild animals into the country.
Prof. Swartz considers groundhog relocation “kind of a prolonged death sentence” that delays the inevitable. When released far from their den, “They don’t where to go, and they don’t know how to deal with predators,” he said. “One in five survives a year.”
While there are live trappers who will do the job, the expense involved in multiple house calls and invoices. So, Hater 1, who grew up around guns, began using a .22-caliber rifle at about 50 yards.
“If I’m lucky, they go back in the hole and die. If not, I toss them at the back of the property for the vultures.” (Although in Springfield, the back of his property has no homes within smelling distance or target range.)
He’s noticed two groundhog sites on his neighbor’s property and says, “I’ll shoot them if they’re in my yard. (In the interest of public safety, I did confirm that he was referring to the groundhogs, not his neighbors).
Last year, Hater 1 got a late start on groundhog season but once roused from his winter torpor dispatched several in what seemed a memorable period for him.
“They just kept coming, I was seeing them four or five at the time. It wasn’t just my obsession.”
I felt reassured when his wife confirmed that.
By year’s end, he had killed a dozen and was nearly on a first-name basis with the vultures.
Another tidbit: Some of the Hater 1’s dearly departed had gnawed through the bottom of an old shed door and, once inside, used the room as a kind sheltered workshop that protected them from the elements while they burrowed through the dirt floor.
Meanwhile, back in the front yard, another groundhog, familiar with the board game Clue, dug a tunnel from a den near a tree, extended it under the driveway that surfaced beneath a peony bush in a garden tended by Ms. Hog-Hater 1, who shook her head a lot during our interview.
Hater 2, who also shot ground hogs during a long-ago barn-invasion in rural Pitchin does not shoot them in a neighborhood setting. Using a shop-vac hose, he most he most pipes carbon monoxide from his car into the den and waits.
“They don’t get scared, they don’t run out, they don’t know what’s happening.”
Ground-breaking work
“I’ve heard of that,” said Prof. Swartz, who, rather than pooh-poohing the report seems glad to have confirmed what he thought might have been an Urban Wildlife legend.
People doing battle with groundhogs “can tell us as much as scientists,” Swartz said, because they observe them so closely.
Through their own observations, Swartz’s Urban Wildlife class last term found out that their hypothesis that racoons do best where humans reside was only “kind of right,” Swartz said. The racoons thrive in most locations.
Swartz himself has been observing a group of groundhogs near the Jeff Wyler dealership on First Street between the Meijer store and Bechtel Avenue.
“They’re probably inbred and are never going to meet the ones on the other side of Meijer. You get that in urban areas where roads function as impossible barriers” to groundhog mobility.
On the other hand, Swartz say, the virtually unbroken corridor along Buck Creek from the Clarence J. Brown Reservoir to the Mad River represents a throughway that squirrels, groundhogs, rabbits and other critters can travel without ever having to cross a road or be bothered by a chicken who seems compelled to explain why he or she did.
One casual from Swartz near the end of our interview made me wonder whether we all have just blown through a major crossroads of another sort.
“By most measures,” Swartz says, “almost every species of animals (on earth) has decreased since the 1970s by 30 percent. That includes birds, butterflies and most mammals.”
Then came he scary part: “We really don’t know a lot about the reasons.”
On a happier note: While earning his Ph.D. at Temple University, Swartz found that Philadelphia squirrels are largely responsible for cleaning up after people who discard their food in city parks. A study he conducted found that of all animals, they located the food first (within 20 minutes) and dealt with it during the next 10.
Two final tidbits:
As of his study, the squirrels had yet to establish a digitized Nest or Door Dash service.
And as of the last time I checked, groundhog recipes, many using carrots and potatoes -- are available online.