Phil Junior at his Terrace.

This is Phil Junior emerging onto his terrace overlooking the pond. He's getting used to the light and can't wait to dig into the peanut butter I left for him. But before he actually digs in, he looks around for any signs of danger or uninvited guests like Scoopy the squirrel who also has a hankering for PB. Notice the PB on the rock "table" that he dug up and placed there for my benefit, no doubt--that way, I don't have to go through the trouble of putting it in a piece of paper towel that I would throw inside his tunnel.

Fishes are People too.

I thought I'd say a few words of about that much maligned branch of the tree of life: fish. Specifically, Koi and Gold Fish. I'll not go into that horrid episode where I killed the first population in my pond by pumping them full of fresh water--OVERNIGHT. That's a terrible thing to do to fish; but I swear to you, it was an accident.

My pond was leaking water something serious and I left the hose on overnight. What is most heinous is that I have a degree in biology and should have known better.

Fast forward to the restocking but with the problem not assuaged by Winter--two Koi and a dozen or more goldfish at PetLand or some such outlet but the water level kept going down and I tried to keep up with it. I did, but the water level went down to where the local cats had access to the fish. The first fish to go were the Koi (they are somewhat sluggish in cold water). One was eaten outright and the other was injured to the point where he died in the pond. I fished him out and left him as road kill--some scavenger was appreciative). The goldfish succumbed one by one to the point where there were only 5 left. I fished out 4 and couldn't locate the fifth. I set up the four goldfish in a 10 gallon (you can put as many goldfish in a 10 gallon as you like but you must be sure to properly oxygenate the water--they will let you know they are suffocating when they breathe near the surface).

I had the fifth goldfish up for lost when my son spotted him and we managed to bring him back to the fold--I named him Sacco. Now I have the five chilling in my 10 gallon tank while I await the repair of the pond by my twin boys who insist--having inherited their mother's OCD--that there must be a continuation of the pond that they constructed. Ok, so here I am with Sacco, Sacco2, BuglyEyes, BuglyEyes2, and Psycho (being as 20% of people are psychopaths, and there is no reason to believe such a characteristic is not biologically conserved across species. lol)

The more I study animal life around me, the more I see a crazy ass intelligence that makes me wonder why we don't exhibit a greater intelligence by a factor that lends some credence to the ratio of our respective brain sizes. These little guys know when feeding time is (6Am, 12Pm, and 6Pm) and have developed a behavior that clearly communicates expectation to me (they line up side by side and look in my direction). They also play (well, at least Sacco2 does) with the bubbles; but all chase each other around in some sort of mating game (or so Google tells me).

Phil, Our Local Groundhog

We've had Phil (what else can you call your first groundhog?) or some reasonable facsimile ever since we moved into our present home in Hudson County. At first, being a working stiff, I didn't pay much attention to Howie our then German neighbor to the west and his constant trapping of the (same?) groundhog. The story was that the rodent was "very destructive" although I don't remember Howie and Helen having either flowers or vegetables.

Fast forward to my semi-retirement and I see that my German/Ukrainian in-laws also seem to consider Phil-like creatures a plague (being from Jersey City, neither knew diddly squat about yard maintenance and they learned everything from Howie and Helen). They didn't try to trap them like Howie did but if they had I think they would have dropped him off at the meadowlands which are nearby. What my in-laws did was to try to outwit Phil by plugging up his entrances with all manner of debris but mostly rocks. Phil just dug around them. That a boy, Phil!

Over the last 2 or 3 years, though, Phil has encountered another human nemesis--our Palestinian neighbors to the east. They said they actually had some damage to their vegetables and said that they were going to poison Phil. I quickly summoned forth the name of Allah, saying that Phil had every right to this Earth or else why would Allah have created him if he didn't fit in with his plan. OK, the Palestinians acquiesced and decided to trap him with a homemade trap. In two years, they have not succeeded.

It's not that Phil has squirrel or crow blood in him--he's quite the lumbering beast and you wonder how he avoids traps and the pit bulls to the east. The reason why Phil doesn't venture into untrodden territory is that I, not wanting to see Phil come down with PTSD, have kept him happy with that perennial and most sought-after food, peanut butter.

I butter the bird feeder with it and slap some on a tree for Scoopy (our squirrel) and, for Phil, I take two tablespoons worth and put it in a small piece of paper towel making a giant "kiss" which I then proceed to throw into one of Phil's tunnels. Sometimes, though, I forget to do that but as I go about my other chores, his highness pokes his head from one of his tunnels and silently asks, "did you forget something?"

Now, to the present. As some may have read elsewhere on this blog, I had problems with the Palestinians and I couldn't help myself thinking that they had redoubled their efforts to catch Phil in retribution (I can't help it, I go through periods of misanthropy that first surfaced during the Bush Administration). Why did I think this way? Well, Phil had made a trail across a section of the lawn between the drain pipe bordering the Palestinian's property and the tray that my mother-in-law used to feed bread to the birds (mind you, the woman is also highly fond of cats and every so often I'll see feathers on the lawn). That was Phil's trail and the other day I noticed that it wasn't that well-worn any more. I shuddered, and Phil, to make matters worse, hadn't surfaced in 3 days. I told my wife that I was hoping that, being that it was Spring and all, Phil was just out poking his dirty, filthy, worm crawling . . . er, you get the idea. And while I'm on the subject of groundhog parenting, the fathers, actually prefer empty nests and read their scions the parable of the three piggies first chance they get. [I saw it firsthand as two "teenagers" thought they were entitled to their pop's tunnels--Phil went after them like a lion hooking up with a divorcee lioness and looking at her sons as if they were morsels. Yea, such is the animal kingdom.]

There was hope, however, yesterday I looked at his entrance by the pond and low and behold, two rocks had been excavated from God knows where and were there adorning his hole. I knew it had to be Phil but were these rocks that I just had not noticed before? I went about my business after having left Phil some Peanut butter by his drain escape. The peanut butter went uneaten for 2 hours. It was then that I spotted his highness, the grand rodent, peering out towards me seeming to ask if I thought a groundhog didn't dig on his stomach (you know, like soldiers marching on theirs). I said, hold on Phil, I'll get you some PB . I buttered his excavated rocks with PB, he came and, I don't know if he thought it was wrapped in paper towel but he snatched it all up in one scoop as if it had been and off he went.

I was most happy when I spotted the civil engineer's handy work and knew Phil or a reasonable facsimile had returned. I wish I can tell them apart. I'd collar the bugger if I thought he'd let me.

BTW, if your property has flooding problems, my advice is that you begin feeding the groundhogs because they make the most wonderful drains in the world--think, they don't like to be flooded either.