groundhog die another day

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Perhaps the most depressing photo ever taken and posted by me:
kudzu destroyed hillside, yet it's where groundhogs live 
and, in time, find rotund rodent romance

A follow-up to my last post:

A second groundhog turned up as roadkill on Chapman Highway. My naturalist training tells me that it was yet another male searching for a female. (Forgive me but I didn't go out into the busy four-lane to investigate its gender, or there might have been yet another male laying there.)

Active burrow

Opposite the location is a massive kudzu covered hillside. See above photo, the circle marks the active burrow. 

Also note the devastation that kudzu does in the South. It is now dormant because it's winter, so you really get a sense of the damage the invasive vine causes, like Sherman's march to the sea. Scorched earth. Or Grapes of Wrath blighted. Enough for the Joads to pack up and leave. 

Yet, groundhogs love kudzu. They live in it and eat it. They just can't eat it fast enough. We need more groundhogs, not less.

If you read my last post, you know that male groundhogs stir early and search for the scent of a "receptive" female, which, or so I have been told, smells like chicken soup.

Obvious moral: If you are a male groundhog in February and you get the whiff of chicken soup wafting from the other side of a busy four-lane. Stay home!

The soup is not always soupier on the other side of the street. 

Another kudzu destroyed hillside where groundhogs live

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