For these pudgy prognosticators, February 2 is more like Valentine’s Day.
A while back, a woman from Florida called Justin McVey to discuss an animal issue. “I just love the Asheville area,” she told the former zookeeper who is now a wildlife biologist at the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. “I love driving up in the middle of summer and seeing all those little baby bears.”
McVey was puzzled. “Baby bears?”
“Yeah,” she said. “There are bears all along the roadway and they’re just sticking their heads up.”
“It took me a minute,” says McVey, chuckling at the recollection. “But I finally realized she thought the groundhogs by the highway were baby bears.”
This isn’t the only misconception about groundhogs, a.k.a. whistle pigs or woodchucks, especially this time of year. Despite our high expectations of Pennsylvania’s Punxsutawney Phil or Georgia’s General Beauregard Lee on February 2, the burrowing marmots don’t emerge that day just for our amusement.
Groundhog Day actually traces its roots to the ancient Christian tradition of Candlemas, when clergy blessed candles for winter. The Germans later tweaked the concept and chose an animal—the hedgehog—as a mascot for weather forecasting. Because hedgehogs aren’t native to North America, German settlers switched to groundhogs when they arrived in Pennsylvania, and Punxsutawney residents celebrated the first Groundhog Day in 1887. Legend has it that if the groundhog sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter. If it doesn’t, we can expect an early spring.
But the real reason the critters are often spotted in early February is that they’re starting to come out of deep hibernation to scout for mates.
“They’re not necessarily selective, at least the males aren’t,” says McVey. “But they kind of look around in their territory, looking for available females in that area. They’re not quite ready to breed, so that would kind of explain why the breeding doesn’t occur right away. It takes a month or so.”
In April, about a month after mating takes place, the groundhogs give birth to four to six little ones. “It’s a good time to have young,” McVey notes. “There’s lot of food becoming available, and one of the driving factors, of course, is that the weather is nicer.”
The reason the Florida caller routinely spotted “bears” on her treks through western North Carolina is probably because the region is a prime spot for groundhogs.
“The range is the Blue Ridge Mountain portion and the northern counties of North Carolina,” McVey says. “Now we’re starting to see some in Mecklenburg County and beyond, but toward Wilmington, we just don’t have groundhogs down there.”
Preferred habitat includes pastures, wooded lots and, yes, roadsides, especially those with an abundance of grass and clover.
Many southeastern cities and towns boast their own version of Punxsutawney Phil. Sadly, Nibbles, the longtime four-legged forecaster at the Western North Carolina Nature Center who was sometimes aided by celebrities like actress Andie MacDowell, died in 2016 of old age.
Despite the animals’ propensity for burrowing, sometimes in suburban yards, McVey says they are not aggressive. To protect gardens, he recommends “creative” fencing buried a couple of inches below ground in an L shape and extending three or four feet above the surface. In the wild, he says, “They’re going to scurry off [if they see humans]. It’s just like any other wildlife. You need to observe it from a distance.”
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The story above appears in our Jan./Feb. 2019 issue.
