Tag: animal behavior during eclipse

Part Three: Every Now and Then I Fall Apart (alternate title: Eat, Prey. Love)

Panic had broken out around her. All the forest animals were aware of the near miss the woodchuck had during the last eclipse and were terrified of not being able to watch for predators. Most had never even realized there were things happening in the skies above them—the only time they looked up was for hawks. Now everyone was suddenly Chicken Little when it came to the sky.

“The birds knew and they didn’t warn us!” screamed the field mice. “It’s a conspiracy!”

“The crickets are in on it, too!” wailed a hedgehog. “How did they know to start chirping? Did they have access to an app that’s only on Android?”

A groundhog, manically running in a circle with his eyes closed, tripped over a root and tore his ACL. He lay on the ground moaning, clutching his wounded limb and making such a racket that it caught the attention of a turkey vulture flying by. This was exactly the kind of eclipse content the bird was hoping for.

The woodchuck was stunned to see the entire meadow and forest had erupted into chaos. Scientists had predicted some animal behaviors might be odd during the eclipse, but not this level of weird. She was horrified to see one of her cousins lying prostrate on the grass, his naked belly exposed to the sky as he screamed incoherently about the end being near. The buzzard certainly seemed to agree with him.

It occurred to the woodchuck that some of the animals might be blaming her for this, which was, of course, ridiculous. All she had done was pretend to be blind for several years to get people to pamper her and bring treats; she never said anything about writhing around on the ground in plain sight of a very large bird with talons and a beak.

Oh. Well, perhaps they had a point.

The woodchuck ducked back into her burrow, uncertain of what to do about the carnage that was about to erupt. Shirley was fully awake now and could hear the screaming above ground. “Do something!” she shouted. “You’re the only one they will listen to!”

The woodchuck did not believe this was necessarily true, but her only other option was going deeper into the burrow and hiding in a tunnel. She glanced wildly around the cozy dark room, trying to think of what to do, when her eyes fell upon a metallic cold food shopping bag she had saved from her last trip to Costco. 

“Shirley!” she screamed. “Help me tear this into strips!” The two woodchucks ripped the silver fabric into long pieces as fast as possible, and she scrambled up the tunnel gripping as many as her tiny arms could hold. 

She paused at top of the hole. Outside there was terror and screaming and possible disembowelment; fellow groundhogs who hated her and felt she was responsible for the carnage that was about to happen. It would be so much easier to duck back inside and hide.

She flashed back on the last eclipse and the power she had felt course through her body just before her retinas started smoking. Maybe there was just a little bit of Captain Marvel still in her.

She dashed out of the hole and threw herself on top of her writhing cousin, flipping him several times until he fell into a nearby burrow. The turkey vulture was in a dive straight for the entrails but had to pull up before it hit the ground, zooming back into the air before readying another approach. This time it was going for her.

“Tie these around your eyes!” she screamed at the other animals, tossing the foil strips in the air. “You won’t go blind!” She threw the last ones at the other woodchucks just as the vulture snatched her by the nape of her neck and lifted her in the air. Shirley seized her foot and went airborne herself. One by one, all the now blindfolded rodents grabbed onto to each other and formed a furry chain that tethered them to ground; it stretched into the sky at least fifteen woodchucks high. 

The turkey vulture gave up, as the groundhogs were all pretty chunky and probably kind of grisly. The chain plummeted to the ground, with the woodchuck hitting last with a wince-inducing smash.

She awoke to a cold compress of soothing leaves on her forehead and a crowd of doting animals trying to anticipate her every need, bringing her insects and delicious berries. It was just like the last eclipse, only this time she could see their grateful faces beaming at her. She was their hero, but now she deserved it. She would be as humble as long she possibly could, or at least until they stopped waiting on her.

She picked up a fresh cicada someone offered her and bit into it, the crunchy filling delighting her senses. There were two or three on the bark platter, and she popped them into her mouth as well. Were they early this year? It seemed too soon for cicadas.

The woodchuck sighed and relaxed. Spring was here, and it was calm, and quiet. She hoped there wouldn’t be any more extraordinary natural phenomena to worry about this year.

Part Two: The Dark Side of the Moon

She wasn’t really blind, of course. A slight singeing and some minimal scarring occurred in her beady black pupils, but that faded quickly. Shirley came every day and bathed her eyes with the juice of assorted berries, which turned them blue for a while. She thought it looked striking but her cousin sniffed and said it reminded her of one of those pale-eyed husky wolves.

More surprising was the outpouring of concern among the forest creatures. A steady stream of delicious leaves and bugs were left outside her burrow so she wouldn’t exhaust herself hunting for food. Get Well Soon! messages scratched into bark were dropped into her hole and she amused herself by sorting them into a scrapbook with the sincerest words at the front. The woodchuck beamed as concerned rodents came from all over the forest to check on her. She had never felt so beloved.

One day while she was out healing in the sun, she accidentally reached out with a lighting fast reflex and caught a grasshopper. It became obvious that she wasn’t sight-impaired and no longer need help. The attention stopped. The other animals had their own checklists to accomplish before winter set in, such as bulking up for hibernation and not getting eaten by hawks.

The woodchuck was not ready to let go of the scam. There is an old saying in the forest: once a narcissus, always a narcissus (animals have far more old sayings than most humans realize). Someone had whittled a long white stick that was the perfect height to use as a cane, so she perched the wire-rimmed sunglasses the guilty marmoset had left for her on the tip of her nose and felt her way around the forest. She knew she looked regal as she worked her way around, waving and tapping, until she realized it also alerted hawks to her presence. 

The whole thing became considerably less entertaining when someone dropped a flyer down her burrow. It was a picture of the current weasel in charge in 2017, the one who liked to wear a severed fox tail on his head; he was staring up at the sun and pointing. Someone had scrawled moron across the picture. They were laughing at her.

She became reclusive and angry. The woodchuck had never been a particularly social animal but now she shunned the other creatures. She showed up late to work, bit the Mayor of Punxsutawney and lost her job as the weather groundhog. She said hateful things about the beavers, about grabbing them whenever she wanted and laughing at how she could do whatever she wanted because she was famous. She meant it ironically because her fame had become an albatross around her neck, but the beavers were still hurt by the comment. The woodchuck also wished she could get that damn bird to leave her alone. 

Even Shirley, her most faithful and loyal cousin, had had enough. “So you made a mistake,” she said, “it was an extraordinary natural phenomena and none of us were ready. The eclipse glasses hadn’t come in yet and how were we to know how stupid it was to stare?” Shirley did not add that she knew enough not to but had enough sense not to mention it.

Cancel culture was real. Humiliated, she stayed in her burrow as much as possible and spent her days watching reality television on her phone. Love is Blind was her favorite. She began grinding her teeth at night, although that proved to be a good thing because it kept her incisors from growing through the roof of her mouth.

Hibernation came as a relief, because for six blissful months she could tune out the rest of the cruel forest and simply dream about being pursued by marmots and not think about the state of the world. As time passed, the weasel with the orange fox tail on his head was inexplicably still around, and she couldn’t help but feel this was all his fault. Perhaps if she had had better guidance, she wouldn’t have stared at the stupid sun. (She also had nightmare about the Love is Blind reunion and woke up in the middle of February wondering why they hadn’t spent more time talking to Chelsea, but was eventually able to fall back asleep.)

Seven years had gone by, a very long time in the short span of a groundhog’s life. And now here she was again, unprepared, with the sky flipping the script and the weird half-moon shadows flickering over the grass. She recalled what Shirley used to say to her: “Those who cannot not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” which was a pretty compelling statement for a groundhog. Actually, it might have been a lyric from a Carlos Santana song, but that wasn’t the point.

What mattered is that she alone had the power to take back her life—only she could change the course of her own history.

She grabbed her tiny sunglasses and turned to face the dark.

Coming soon: A Total Eclipse of the Heart

Part One: Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

The woodchuck startled awake, sitting up so quickly in her burrow that she banged her head on the dirt ceiling of her sleeping chamber. It was pitch black inside and she was disoriented and dizzy—but this wasn’t like normally waking from hibernation and waiting for your eyes to adjust; something about this felt sinister. She heard a voice whisper the darkness is coming. 

“Shirley, what did you say?” Her cousin, who had slept over during hibernation, groaned and rolled over on her side. “Go back to sleep,” she mumbled. “It’s too early to get up. It’s only April.”

Ignoring her cousin, the woodchuck poked her head out of her hole and did a slow 360 degree turn around the meadow. The sky was still black and across the horizon the light was beginning to dawn, but on the other side, the sun was setting. How could that be? She thought she heard the rumbling bass of Johnny Cash singing about going down, down, down. Something was wrong. Something was happening.

The insects had gone silent. Even the birds were still, as if it were the middle of their sleep cycle. Tiny half moon shadows danced across the grass.

She reached for the dark glasses that were usually perched on her tiny forehead, but they were not there. It made her uneasy to not have them on, because you just never knew when you were going to be caught outside with proper eye protection and . . .

“Oh my God!” she screamed. “It’s another fucking eclipse!”

Seven years earlier: August 21, 2017

The woodchuck scampered playfully toward her burrow but paused to hide behind a huge catalpa leaf, looking back coquettishly to see if the large marmot was still ­­following her. Most of her hind quarters were sticking out on either side of the leaf. Mating season was over, but you couldn’t blame a girl for flirting. 

The marmot must have lost interest, for he stood frozen, staring at the ground. Tiny half moon shadows were dancing across the dry grass and the normal chatter of the birds had ceased. The silence was eerie and the woodchuck shivered slightly, wondering what had happened to the blistering hot day that she had been sweating through just moments ago. Why was it getting darker? Hadn’t she just eaten lunch?

Her would-be suitor the marmot began running toward her, glancing in terror at the sky. He grabbed her and shouted, “Look away! Look away! It’s the Rapture!” as he dashed off and dove into a burrow.

The woodchuck had hoped that was going to be her line but apparently not. 

Suddenly, every cricket in the forest launched into a cacophony of chirping like someone had flipped on a switch. What was wrong with these stupid insects? They weren’t supposed to start that infernal noise until after dark.

Except that it was. It shouldn’t be, but it was. 

She glanced up at the sky just in time to see a black disk slip in front of the fiery sun. A golden orange ring surrounded the circle with flame-like spikes pointing in every direction. All the other creatures had vanished down holes or were hiding in trees. She thought she heard the opening notes of Also Sprach Zarathustra off in the distant forest, or maybe it was Johnny Cash? She was alone in the meadow, transfixed by the movement in the sky, suddenly wondering if she was about to become imbued with super powers by the glowing orb that had been overcome by a simple circle. What could this mean? Was she about to become Captain Marvel? 

As she stared at the black hole that had swallowed the sun, a brilliant point of light appeared on one side. She squinted a bit but was hypnotized by the sight and could not tear her eyes away as the inky sphere moved diagonally and the searing light of the sun burned away the dark orb. 

Shirley was shouting at her, something about stop staring at it! and are you a complete moron? But if she was going to become the next Marvel hero, she didn’t want to miss a moment of it. 

Suddenly the day became normal again. The heat returned and the crickets shut up, embarrassed they had been fooled by something as basic as a celestial event. Shirley dragged the woodchuck into her burrow and started screeching at her about crispy retinas, which the woodchuck thought sounded delicious until she realized what it meant. 

She spent most of that fall and hibernation hiding in her burrow, rubbing a salve of crushed fireflies and tree sap into her sore eyes that did not seem to help much but gave her an eerie glow. A tiny pair of round sunglasses were left at the opening of her burrow, a gift from the guilt-stricken marmot who had apparently confused the Rapture with an eclipse.

From that day forward, she would be known across the meadow as the Blind Woodchuck. 

Coming soon: Part Two: The Dark Side of the Moon

Animal Crackers

An interesting factoid about the solar eclipse is how it will affect the behavior of animals. Clearly the woodchuck* may be regretting some of his decisions, but how will his furry friends react to this natural phenomenon? According to the internet, not well.

“Researchers of the Zoological Survey of India studied rock bees during an eclipse, finding that the number of them leaving and returning to their hive every minute increased dramatically during a partial solar eclipse. These social bees are known for their aggressive defense strategies and vicious behavior when disturbed. As the sun dipped behind the moon, more than 150 bees buzzed about, when normally only a few would move away from the hive. Said the researcher, “It would appear that during the partial solar eclipse, the rock bees became distinctly restless and more active.” 

Distinctly restless and more active is not how I want my bees to behave, and that was just during a partial eclipse. They are going to totally freak during a total one. It also appears that the colonial orb-weaving spiders of Mexico will have no idea what to do with themselves, as they start ripping apart their webs when the day goes completely dark, then reconstructing them when the light returns. Even the hippos are going to need Xanax:

“Hippos on a sandbar in the Zambezi River began entering the water as the eclipse set in — possibly mistaking it for the onset of evening, when the animals typically leave their resting places and traverse the bottom of the river. Sunlight returned before any of the herd had reached the riverbanks, and the study reported an apparent sense of confusion, even apprehension among the animals. They continued in this state, seemingly, for the rest of the day.”

So now we’ve got angry bees, confused spiders and apprehensive hippos all running around, as well as an extra million cars on the roads trying to get to the Path. And apparently ground squirrels go completely nuts as well, as the length of their “non-stop running sessions were much greater than normal during and for two hours after the eclipse.” This should make for some interesting roadkill. Between the angry bees and the manic squirrels, I may not even get out of the car.

Oh, sure, you say, it’s just a squirrel. They are small and cute and can be beaten to death with a shovel if necessary. But have scientists considered how this lunar event is going to affect werewolves? The moon will be full as the shadow passes in front of the sun, even though it’s the middle of the day. If this is messing with the hippo’s heads, what will it do to werewolves? Once again, I turned to the internet for expert advice:

“A lunar eclipse during a full moon will cause a werewolf to de-transform from their monstrous hairy wolf form during the eclipse. Yet they will maintain their mindless violent werewolf rage while in human form and will totally lose all sense of humanity, causing them to go on a serial killing spree of anything that crosses their path.”

And I was worried there wasn’t going to be any cell phone service.

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*There was some chatter on Facebook about the fact that a woodchuck and a groundhog are the same thing. While that may be factually correct, please be assured that nothing on this blog can be assumed to be true as my main research tool is werewolves.com. But it would explain the nightmare that I had where I kept thinking I had written a new post, only to wake up each day and find it was the same one over and over.