Tuesday, September 17, 2013

I Am Clarence

Hi.  My name is Clarence.  I own a farm in Virginia.  I'm a big guy.  How big, you say?  Well, the other day, I was sitting on the compost heap, and I heard a human, a female human, scream, "Holey S**t!  There's a bear cub over there!"

That's an odd human.  She comes out to feed me from a ceramic bucket, but it is never the same food.  I like the slightly rotten tomatoes.  I ignore the crumpled egg shells, and am not fond of the coffee grounds.  One day she gave me a whole head of slimy lettuce.  I just sat basking in the sun and nibbled it from the leaves all the way down to the stem.  Yum.  The best was when she tossed out two overripe spaghetti squashes.  I am ashamed to admit, I devoured them both at one sitting.

As I was saying, that human, she is odd.  She wears a funny leaf or something over her head, sometimes brown, sometimes, black, and sometimes blue and green.  And she wears these weird rubbery things on her feet.  Those look like they'd be tough to chew.  And, though she comes out to feed me every day or so, other times I hear her calling the black furry barking dog to chase me.

I thought she was amusing at first, the human.  Once, I was watching one of my females with our twins, and the human started barking at them.  Seriously.  She barked, and she sounded fierce.  My family scattered, and the human's companions all laughed.  Now that the human has her dog here all the time, I know who she learned from.  I didn't think humans were smart enough to learn animal languages.

I have tunnels everywhere.  I have quite a network, although my favorite door is in that compost heap.  But the human and her male seem intent on finding me.  They actually set up a camera to try to find me.  Ha!  As if they could find my holes.  You can only find one of my holes if you step in one, but more on that later.  The camera.  They set it up all over my farm.  At first, I carefully sneaked under the camera and ate the female's vegetables.  That game got old.  So then, I decided to just ignore it, and go about my business as usual.

One day, as the camera was making those tiny little noises, snapping me as I walked by, it hit me.  Maybe it would be more fun to photo bomb the camera.  So, I took a big bite of leaf, stood up on my back legs, and started chewing.  I did it a couple of times.  I wanted to show it my bum, but I am too short.  But that gave me the next idea.  I could get my animal friends to photo-bomb as well!  Whenever I saw the camera, I would tell everyone where it was!  What a great idea!  We got to work.


Yeah, good times.  The buck tried to do the photo bomb, but he wound up mooning the camera instead.  Show-off.











However, all good things come to an end.  The female got her male to set up a gun and shoot it.  He shot at paper, which I think is pretty odd, but I know what happens next.

So, I laid a trap.  In one of my outbuildings, I have an old network of holes and tunnels coming up into the floor.  The female was in there, and I watched her carefully step around the holes.  Then she left to go investigate the outside walls--I think she was considering the building for a chicken-coop.  While she was gone, I connected two holes together just for her...inches under the ground.  I mean, why else would I dig such a shallow tunnel?

Sure enough, she came back.  She stepped around the big holes by the door, and then moved to step between the two connected ones.  One foot down, and the tunnel collapsed, and she screamed as her foot sank into the dirt.  She jumped away, screaming as she ran out.

I just about died laughing.  I wonder what else I can do to provoke that noise again.

I am Clarence.  I am a groundhog.  I am legion.

2 comments:

B Mc from TX said...

That was awesome Heather!

B Mc from TX said...

Love the story! I bet that scream was priceless!