Can woodchucks run in reverse?

[RSherman]

Recently, my mother told her friends and I a funny story about a woodchuck. I googled "poems about woodchucks" and could find only two and they were mean! So, I decided to write about her encounter:

ENCOUNTER WITH AN AGILE MARMOT

It’s woodchuck season again.
In fields and woodlands
they abound.
I drive slowly,
knowing they’re around.

The “land beaver” or “whistlepig”
is a climber like its squirrel cousin,
only much bigger.
“Woodchuck” has roots in
Native American:
wejack, woodshaw, wuchak,
and monax, the “digger”.

A few days ago
my mother told a story
of a ‘chuck that ran
in front of her motorcycle.
She claimed it pedaled straight backward.
Can they do that?
Surely, that’s a first????

The very next day
one waddled in front of my truck.
I braked and it turned
and walked back to the grass.
I guess his gears did not
include “reverse”.

[Walleye]

1. When I was young girl I saw a groundhog, or woodchuck climb a tree, nobody believed me

[RSherman]

2. That's cool!

Well, I guess that gets to be your special secret! I've never seen one climb. I was skiing once and saw a porcupine high up in a tree. We were eye to eye from the chairlift.

[Walleye]

3. Yikes! porcupines aren't as fun as groundhogs, especially to dogs

[doc03]

4. Fifty years ago we had thousands of acres of abandoned strip mine land

in eastern Ohio. It was our playground we had free rein to hunt, fish, shoot, swim, I even ran across a couple
patches of marijuana that I never got near. People had varmint rifles and bragged about the distance we
shot groundhogs from. I have seen groundhogs climbing trees before. The coal companies sold all that land now it
is posted no trespassing. I quit hunting about 25 years ago, I couldn't shoot anything now except with a camera.

[Walleye]

5. Good for you, hunting with a camera is much more rewarding than hunting with a gun

[Rebl2]

6. I have seen them do that too

My husband and I were on our deck several years ago and saw some baby groundhogs run up a willow tree a little way. Neither of us had seen that before.

[Waterguy]

7. chucking the wood in the wooded glen

Deep in the valley of the forest
It was the wood chucker's paradise.
Where the rivers run their course /
The most perfect place to be/ if
you wanted to keep it green
you needed them.

You'd walk by and marvel at what they did because you understood.


To be a wood chucker, an architect, born to have that instinct,
in the exact correct place.
What Beauty
so succinct / whoa... Slow down Johnny, don't get the wrong
Idea. Think! Nature, you know, naturally sometimes human being's
go a tad bit too far with motor mechanized movement of Mother Earths
surface - like, where-ever...


Well, there's that, and then, there's all the hunting for beaver skins
That went down.

Note - the one thing may not have led to the other. But, I'm just saying!
They kind of did!!!

Peace!

[RSherman]

8. I love this!

Thanks for sharing!