Tag: groundhog

Present: Tense

The anxiety was unbearable, like when hundreds of bees had burrowed into her fur and were all screaming at her at once because she ate their queen. (She didn’t mean to eat their ruler; it was just that all bees looked alike.) Every moment felt like hours, and the cacophony of who said what felt like it was at full volume. The rabbits in the meadow kept chanting, “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats” like it was a hilarious joke, not realizing that they could be next in the food chain. It felt like everyone had lost their damn minds.

Her cousin Shirley dropped by unexpectedly to recruit her to be a poll watcher. The woodchuck assumed that meant the polecats were going to be putting on another show, but watching those skinny little freaks dance made her feel bad about her thighs and she had enough things to worry about.

When was this madness going to be over? The animals in the forest were constantly going on about who they thought should run the woods, and every species seem to have a different idea of who was the scariest. Anxious chatter filled the skies from the bluebirds and the redbirds seemed to be completely divorced from reality, and now the muskrat was offering to pay people to vote for the weasel. The woodchuck felt that was extremely unfair, because no one on her side of the meadow was doing anything like that and she could use some extra cash. She didn’t really know what she would do with money, but she did love to win things. Also, how was that not illegal? She hoped the meerkat named Garland was looking into this.

She needed to distract herself, because if she saw one more clip of that weasel dancing to YMCA, she was going to gnaw off the paw holding her phone. 

She tried watching Netflix, but the thing kept buffering and freezing. Reception in her burrow was never great, and it could always be counted on to go out just when you finally managed to lose yourself in the latest episode of Love is Blind, where the people were all terrible and no one talked about Arnold Palmer’s dick. She lay on her back in the dark, watching that little circle go endlessly around and around but never quite completing itself, not unlike this election cycle. She tried not to think about the reports that the polls were tightening, because she knew that had nothing to do with the stripping ferrets, or the fact that Pennsylvania —home of Punxsutawney, where she had faithfully predicted the weather for all those Groundhog Days!—might let her down. 

Her head was going to explode if she kept thinking about this. How was she going to get through the next fourteen days? What she needed was a sure-fire distraction, a completely reliable streaming service that worked in a dark burrow and would provide enough mind numbing content to refocus her brain and force her amygdala to process only big-lipped housewives, badly-behaved yacht crews, and whatever Alan Cummings was wearing.

The woodchuck sat up, suddenly clearheaded. This was a great idea! Finally, a project that would focus her mind and keep her from endless checking her phone for updates on whether the former leader Bushy the Squirrel had endorsed someone. The woodchuck started sketching a logo for this new app and realized she should immediately apply for a patent before someone else could grab her concept. She would call it — TunnelVision!

Unfortunately, when the woodchuck applied for the trademark, she discovered that someone else had already patented the idea. It was called Bravo TV. 

It was going to be a long two weeks.

Fourteen days to go. If anxiety and nerves could power vehicles, we would never again need to drill, baby, drill.

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

Piece on Earth, Good Will Toward . . .

At the time, going to the wedding seemed like a good idea—the woodchuck had needed some cheering up. She should have been deep into hibernation by now, but lately the state of the forest had made her anxious and depressed and she found herself wide awake and staring into the darkness of mid-December.

When the huge gold leaf had swirled into her burrow, she’d been impressed. The calligraphy scratched across the surface announced the marriage of her cousins Chip and Dale—to each other. She wasn’t sure how she felt about this. It was common knowledge that all her cousins mated with each other because really, how were you supposed to know if they were related to you or not? But actually getting married felt a little extreme. This must have been Chip’s idea—he had always pushed the envelope a bit more than the others.

An overheard conversation where a park ranger had mentioned traveling to her destination and a spur of the moment decision had led to her now being trapped in a leather satchel in an overhead bin. An announcement about landing jarred her awake, and she began chewing her way out of the carry-on, wondering why it smelled like cows and hoping it wasn’t anyone she knew.

Escaping the bag had been easy, but now she was locked in the compartment. There was a small space in the back, and she barely squeezed her furry butt through the hole. This extra hibernation weight was going to be a bitch to get off in the spring. The woodchuck poked her head out of the last bin and came face to snout with a human wearing a red scarf tied jauntily around her neck. A shriek filled the plane; and while the woodchuck wasn’t familiar with the finer points of flying, even she knew that this much noise from the flight attendant —now trying to stand on a drink cart—was going to send the rest of the seated passengers into a frenzy. She leaped to the floor and ran full speed up the aisle, the shouts of “Rat! Rat! It’s a rat!” taunting her. A panicked stew hit the emergency exit and a long yellow slide suddenly inflated in front of her. Not being a fan of playground equipment, she added her own screams to the chaos as she slid down backwards on her belly, her sharp toenails carving ragged slits in the rubber tube. By the time she reached the bottom, the limp yellow plastic was waving in the wind as she scampered away across the tarmac, gasping and shaking. She’d always been a nervous flyer.

The woodchuck found a nearby burrow and plunged into the darkness. She paused to compose herself, and as she took deep breaths, she thought about how the plane people had reacted when they assumed she was a rat. It was a ridiculous mistake—she didn’t even have a tail!—but their terror had been palpable. It had felt powerful to command such fear. At home when humans saw her on the golf course near her meadow, they usually started singing that dumb Kenny Loggins song. God, she hated Caddyshack.

The tunnel she was in lit up with headlights coming from both directions and a cacophony of enraged honking. This was not like the burrows she was used to. She serpentined between the metal beasts trying to avoid their wheels but the lights were so terrifying that she froze. She watched helplessly as Death by SUV approached, when suddenly hundreds of tiny paws reached up through a metal grate behind her and pushed it aside. They grabbed chunks of the fur on her haunches and pulled her through the hole into a freefall, where she landed in freezing water that had more than just a whiff of a sewage to it. As she tried to shake the sludge from her ears, she became aware of thousands of yellow eyes staring up at her. Terrified, she turned to flee, when all the watching rats began bowing and stroking her fur. 

“Oh, wondrous giant being, you have dropped from the dreaded Tunnel of Abe to lead our people in your ways of survival and lunch. We salute your girth and beg you to teach us how to become as large and powerful as you are.”

The woodchuck was annoyed at the crack about her weight—it was hibernation, damn it!—but if thousands were offering to worship her, who was she to argue?

“Um, teeming crowds of rodents who smell of typhoid and filth, you have earned my undying gratitude! I am only in your fair sewer for a short time, so you must choose a leader who knows the path of these tunnels and can lead your millions to less smelly living quarters.” 

The rats seemed moved by her modest suggestion that there were others more qualified to lead than she, so she added, “I seek a great tree, hundreds of feet in the sky and surrounded by a ring of ice, to attend the wedding of my cousin.”

Moving in unison as if they were a swirling swarm of garbage, the mischief of rats began to lead her through the subway system. They paused for a moment to consult Google maps, and then scampered up the steps at 47th Street. The woodchuck was once again amazed by the humans who ran screaming in all directions as the horde burst out of the subway opening. They came upon an open plaza and then abruptly stopped, their millions of amber eyes wide with awe. A magnificent tree soared into the clouds and was lit up and sparkling against the darkening sky. How her cousin had been able to pull this off was beyond her ken, but Chip sure knew how to throw a party.

“Here is your destination, O Great Woodchuck! And to prove our admiration for your style and substance, we got you a date!”

The swarm parted to make a path, and each rodent watched in admiration as a muscular rat dragging an enormous slice of pizza approached the woodchuck. He winked at her and nodded at the piece of pie; she blushed and then grabbed the other side. The two of them headed toward the ceremony, each of them wondering what the night might bring, as it began to softly snow. It was, after all, Christmas in New York.

Christine Broquet loves it when all the rats of New York and Chicago can come together to wish each other a happy holiday and a wonderful start to a new year!
God bless them, every one—or rather, six million.