Groundhogs, woodchucks and whistle pigs are the same animal. Native to North America, they are strict vegetarians (save for the occasional egg) that have brownish-gray fur. They hibernate from October through April, so they don’t watch a lot of football, and they’re sometimes late sending in their taxes.
Despite what you may have heard, groundhogs don’t all come out on February 2 to check for a shadow. This tradition was brought in by German immigrants who celebrated Candlemas and thought that the weather on that day would foretell how long winter would continue.
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck? Probably none. They can climb trees to get food, but they prefer being on (or in) the ground. The name woodchuck is an Anglicized version of the Algonquian word for the animal, created by early English settlers trying to translate the name into something that made sense.
Article comments