Chomping, Tearing, Turning, Advancing

Down in the back yard a shape catches my eyes.  There’s groundhog waddling around. If you look at a ground hog through the binoculars, they look more serious and determined than their cuddly shape would suggest at a distance.  I am marveling the speed with which he chews.  He does not pause as he consume, chomping, tearing, turning, advancing, and only occasionally stopping to consider his surroundings. 

There are half a doze squirrels asl o the yard, chewing up the seeds I’d through out about an hour ago.  They are also determined.  They also have extremely serious faces upon close examination.  But squirrels pause more.  They cup a shell, bring up to shuck it, accomplish this in a second and always, look around. To see if something might be coming.   One can only imagine that in this ecosystem, they have a lot more predators to worry about.  The groundhog doesn’t seem to care so much. 

It would have to be a damn big owl or hawk to lift that guy up and off the ground.  Perhaps they wouldn’t need to, but I’d assume they lift their prey up and fly away.  I just spent ten minutes bouncing around the web and hawks kill prey with their talons.  Owls, however use their talons and their beak's.  I couldn’t find a photo or a video of contest between and owl and a groundhog, though I did see a rather unfortunate but decisive encounter between an owl and a rat.

Red Tailed Hawks, however, it would appear, most assuredly do feast upon ground hogs.  An amateur video on Youtube seems to buttress my thesis that ground hogs are not particularly concerned with predators.  This groundhog, which is notably smaller than the well-fed individual who parades around my lawn, walks out from behind a park trash can and seem to walk along unconcernedly.  A few feet away is an enormous Red Tailed Hawk who darts, almost comically behind the garbage can in the first second of the clip.  One can only assume the groundhog is about to be surprised.  He plods along and the hawk follows.  Oddly, neither seem to do anything drastic.  The groundhog waddles along the hawk struts clumsily behind him.  Did the groundhog reckon that to run would only make it worse?  Surely he must have surmised that he was in mortal danger.  Eventually he is backed up to a rock and the two stare each other down.  But when the ground hog turns he doesn’t tear off, he just takes a few steps and suddenly the hawk pounces, and effortlessly sails away to another part of the park.  The camera-person, who should be rewarded for not having, ejaculated “holy shit”, during this sequence, walks over to where the hawk has landed and is able to get quite close.  The hawk is standing over groundhog who is lying motionless.  Talons alone were, it appears, quite sufficient.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xYbQVK6AF4

Sunday, 4/26/20