Location Taken: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Time Taken: November 2012
I saw a groundhog today. It was munching its way through some grass at the side of the road, next to the stoplight I was waiting at. It wasn’t concerned about the cars at all, just the tasty grass, as it wandered around.
I’ve seen a lot of groundhogs at that particular area. It’s got a lot of mowed grassy areas that are rarely actually used by the humans who mowed them, with plenty of space for burrows, plus there’s a forest nearby as well. It seems like a pretty good place to be a groundhog, no real competition, plenty of food, and a reasonable degree of safety. There’s no predators around, even the local hawks aren’t large enough to be a problem for a full-grown groundhog. All they have to watch out for are cars, and they seem to do a good job of it.
I don’t have any photos of groundhogs, though. I’m pretty much always driving when I see them, and I don’t carry my camera around every day. I do have many pictures of elk, though. They’re kinda like groundhogs, brown mammals that adapted well to humanized habitats, right? Eh, close enough.
I keep forgetting groundhogs exist, though. Ask me to list local wildlife and I’ll never remember to include them. They’re, well, too generic. Stout body, not too thick, not too thin. Basic four limbs and a tail, all at standard proportions. Not too small, but not that large. A face that has no specific features, somewhat like a beaver but not too far off of many other animals. Brown fur, covering them solidly but never anything distinguishing. If you boiled down the essence of common features of a mammal, you’d probably end up with a groundhog.
I suppose it’s not bad being generic. I mean, animals choose these features more often than others for a reason. Putting them all together has to work fairly well.
