JOY ALONG THE WAY: NO CLOVEN HOOVES ON GROUNDHOGS

Groundhog Day! I had a pet groundhog once. I called him Chuck, though, short for woodchuck, the anglicized corruption of its Indian name. Chuck didn't know he was my pet. Our eyes met only once. But we had an ongoing game for a while. At least I thought it was somewhat of a game, maybe a nuisance for Chuck.

This was when I was walking daily on the far side of the park where runs a little stream of water. A big cottonwood grows on the bank. One day in early autumn as I walked by the cottonwood, I saw this mound of fresh dirt.

Long acquainted with woodchucks' telltale signs of their deep burrows and the care they take to keep the tunnels in good repair, I made a little hole in the center of the dirt mound and dropped in a sycamore ball I had been carrying, being careful to bury it.

I was eager, next day, to pass by the site. New dirt had been dug up. The mound was higher. I scratched around in it and found my sycamore ball, intact. I inserted it as before, a little deeper this time, feeling a little guilty but also feeling that I was conducting some great experiment.

Rain made the mound a dirty mess for the next few days. I let it be, wondering if the sycamore ball had washed down the tunnel where Chuck was preparing his winter home. He left some fresh footprints no cloven hooves like a hog, as some unenlightened person might think, the rodent having hog associated with his name. The footprints are somewhat like a human hand -- four fingers and prehensile thumb on the hind foot, but only four fingers on the front.

In a few days, passing by, I saw fresh dirt again and, searching, found my sycamore ball on the top of the heap, a little muddy and frayed, but still recognizable.

One more time, I thought. Down went the somewhat frazzled sycamore ball. In a few days, it was up again, like some sprouting seed. I had to laugh. Chuck, evidently tired of my game, had stripped the fuzz off and cracked the inner hard core into several pieces. There they lay, at the base of the dirt mound as if for me to see.

Having thus inconvenienced Chuck, I thought to make up for it. Next day, I took an apple and laid it on the top of the mound, covering it lightly with dirt lest some passerby see it and get dizzy with wonderment.

Woodchucks love apples. Next day there was nothing left of the apple but a ragged piece of core. I felt as if I'd made my peace. But then, maybe the muskrat got it, or a 'possum or coon. There all kinds of such animals traipsing up and down the banks of this little stream.

Ere long, there was no more fresh dirt indicating Chuck was keeping his tunnel clean. The mound was leveled off by the weather and I knew that my squat, snub-nosed, coarse-haired friend had gone way below to curl up for his winter nap, subsisting on the large amount of food he had eaten at the end of summer, including, perhaps, my offering of the apple. I marked the site with a stick to see if anything emerged there the next Feb. 2. Nothing did. But I'm sure Chuck, like other goundhogs, had a number of branching tunnels that led to other doors.

What, according to legend, makes the groundhog emerge in February? Maybe his life-sustaining fat has been used up. Maybe he hears the siren song of the sap in the tree roots singing, "Up, up, we got to go up."

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.