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Hanging out by our deck
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Visiting our deck
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Over the last year I have seen our resident groundhog several times in a tree at eye level off our deck, 10 feet above the ground. Mammal resources say that they may climb a tree to look for escape from predators but our whistle pig seems to do it just for fun and may spend up to an hour hanging out.
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Posing for a game camera
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The groundhog, Marmota monax, also known as a woodchuck, is our only Missouri member of the family Sciuridae, large ground squirrels known as marmots. It is common to see one or more nearly motionless individuals standing
erect on their hind feet watching for danger.
When alarmed, they use a
high-pitched whistle to warn the rest of the colony, hence another name
"whistle-pig." They are intelligent and form complex social networks. They have kinship groups with their young, understand and communicate threats, and are able to work cooperatively to solve tasks such as burrowing. The groundhog prefers open country and the edges of woodland, and is rarely far from a burrow entrance.
Mostly herbivorous, groundhogs eat primarily wild grasses and other vegetation, including berries and agricultural crops, when available. Note that branches are not in their diet. Apparently the answer to "How much wood would a wood chuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood" is very little. Last week when Chuckey came down from the tree he spent the next 10 minutes munching on the grasses and forbs along our deck as seen in this video.
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Visiting our truck
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A risque fact is that groundhog social groups consist of one adult male and two
adult females,
each with an offspring from the previous breeding season (usually female), and the current litter of infants. Interactions within a female's group are generally friendly.They have a social greeting of nasal-oral contact much like an "Eskimo kiss" from my childhood. OK, that was 75 years ago so put that down to ancient history.
