Our little friend

Ever since moving into this house, we've had glimpses of a smallish creature that is living nearby. At first we thought it was a beaver, but no flat, wide tail. Instead, it had a flat, narrow, fur-covered tail! None of us had ever seen anything quite like it.
Everytime it wandered through the yard, one of us would yell and everyone went running to the window to check out our wee mystery.
I think it was Kelly Lovejoy that suggested it may be a woodchuck, so I got online to look at images, and there was our little friend! Yep, he/she is a woodchuck, more commonly known as a groundhog. I never would have guessed, I thought groundhogs were much smaller. Turns out, they're about the size of a largish cat. This one certainly is anyway.

I hope it comes out on Jalen's Birthday, he's often been referred to as our "little groundhog" baby due to his Feb. 2nd Birthday. Maybe we'll get lucky and shoot a pic of it one day...in the meantime I borrowed this one from the web.

They're really cool to watch, but I'm nervous about gardening and how to keep it from being desroyed. They're vegetarians, so I may have to plant a special bed of food just for Mr. Groundhog. Maybe he'll leave the cucumbers alone if I plant his favorite grasses. It'll be an interesting experiment.