I wrote this post last spring and am sharing it here because I will no longer have a website for now, just my Etsy store.
In my altered book, Fairy Journal, I did a painting of a woodchuck, I named him Willie. Well Willie is real and just like in the painting the first time we saw him, there was always a small pile of dirt on his head.
Willie came to the yard about two years ago. And every year we try to get Willie to move on.
My daughter said our first mistake was to name the woodchuck, once it's named its personality just comes to life.
Lesson learned!
Willie showed up when the temps were horribly hot in Wisconsin. It found refuge on the side of a shed were concrete had been laid.
We tried everything to encourage him to leave. Woodchucks have a strong sense of smell and there are just some things they dislike, like the herb mint. I planted mint, threw mint down his hole, turns out this particular woodchuck doesn't seem to mind mint, what I threw down the hole disappeared, and the plant was uprooted.
Okay...now I know this is gross, but I put my cats waste into the hole... he buried it for me.
Lastly, we bought a spray that wouldn't harm him, but the smell should have sent him scampering away. Either this woodchuck had no sense of smell, or he knew that deep down in his heart we care about him,
We spent a lot of time watching him/she, eating dandelion leaves, grass and whatever else was green. The funny part about all of this was that the yard felt very peaceful.
Fall came and Willie left, and we filled up the hole with river rock and soil, yeah, I know claws can move dirt and rocks with no problem at all, but one can only hope for the best.
Last year, Willie came for a short time, we had smoke from the fires in Canada and then a drought that turned everyone's grass brown. While he was in the yard, we'd push the dirt back into the hole every day and every day the woodchuck would re dig his hole but a little neater, almost to say, hey I can be a good guest. Willie left during the time of the drought, and we didn't see Willie again until the grass turned green.
And on a fall day I watched Willie look around at its paradise and head off across the road to who knows where (we aren't far from a trail and natural reserve) and didn't come back.
We filled the hole again; nobody disturbed it, and we hoped Willie wouldn't show up.
This late spring Willie popped out from under a pine tree and a baby popped out behind her..."Oh NO" I said, and another popped out behind that baby. "NO, NO, NOOO" Another popped out and another... SHIT! Kinda funny like a train they all followed her to the hole.
The babies are cute, and they have grown a lot and fast.
Willie... Wilmina.
So, you ask... how do we know its Willie, we really don't, but we suspect it is by the way it acts and a marking on the side of its face and the shortness of its tail.
Update... Willie's babies have grown and moved on and so has Willie. It was fun to see them all.
Peace and Love,
Dolores
