LETTERS FROM HOME: MR. GROUNDHOG BECOMES LOST IN HIS OWN NEIGHBORHOOD

July 15, 1999

Dear Pat,

Firefighters have a hard job. When the bell sounds they must respond with the same dispatch whether the call turns out to be a false alarm or a life-threatening blaze. Living with DC, I've learned to differentiate.

Nearly six years into our marriage, the tone she uses is all that's necessary for me to deduce a response. Sometimes it demands a "Yes?", sometimes a "What?" I can tell when I am being summoned to perform some kind of manly feat. She doesn't play the dependent female she isn't. When she says "I can't get this to open" she implies some fault on the part of the manufacturer.

It becomes harder to discriminate when the summons has anything to do with an animal. These all sound like emergencies, even if one of the finches has caught its nail on the cage again and needs an old hand at extrication.

I was sleeping in on a Saturday morning the last time the piercing sound of an animal emergency reached my ears. I rushed to the bedroom door but could hear only the terrified words "GROUNDHOG ... HEAD... HELP" because DC was running back out the kitchen door. Oh-oh, I thought, quickly pulling on a T-shirt and shorts. The groundhog and Lucy have a combat history.

The groundhog, who DC is familiar enough with to call Mr. Groundhog but is as likely a Ms., keeps a burrow in our backyard as well as others behind a neighbor's house. Lucy at various times has pursued it into the hole until only her stub of a tail is visible. She's like the soldiers in Vietnam who crawled into black tunnels without knowing what might be waiting for them. Fearless. Hank just watches and growls.

One time when Lucy and Hank caught the groundhog in the open there were 10 minutes of vicious blustering but no injuries appeared to have been inflicted.

Running downstairs I felt a bit like the firefighters and the soldiers, ignorant for the moment of the predicament that might await.

But Hank and Lucy were in the kitchen and the backyard was empty. Opening the side gate, I dashed down the driveway then stopped momentarily at the crest of the hill to take in the scene across the street.

There was DC with a rake in one hand and a cardboard box in the other. She was making circling motions around an animal that resembled a groundhog with a blue head.

As I ran across the street I saw this most certainly was a groundhog dilemma of a different kind. This was a groundhog with a one-pound coffee can stuck on its head. This was a disoriented groundhog with St. Frances of Lorimier Street in pursuit. It was lucky it couldn't see she had a rake and a box.

DC's plan, of course, was to guide the groundhog into the box. Afterward she told me she then proposed to free the groundhog from the coffee can with bolt cutters.

But she wasn't having any luck with the first part of the plan, and the groundhog's squirming 360s were making it all the harder. You probably need to practice your rake and box technique with a few groundhogs before getting good at it.

DC looked like someone trying out a very new dance step.

I grabbed the box from her and dropped it over the groundhog. When he pulled away, the edge of the box caught the edge of the coffee can. Suddenly he was free.

The groundhog immediately ran under a parked car. DC waited like a school crossing guard until he scurried back across the street to safety.

"My hero," she said when she came inside. We are here to serve and protect.

As DC was watering flowers in the backyard a few days later, the groundhog approached from the other side of the fence, stood upright and began nibbling pokeberries.

"Hello Mr. Groundhog," she said. He just kept on eating.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.