Groundhogs

Looking out the back door today, I spotted two groundhogs in our backyard. I’ve been suspicious that there were two — I’ve previously thought I saw a larger one and a smaller one, and the coloring has seemed different sometimes. Today however, they were practically side-by-side and it was easy to see that one was much larger than the other and one was clearly brown while the other was clearly gray (the brown one is nearly twice as big and nearly two feet long).

I ran to get the camera, though I realized I probably couldn’t get a shot by the back door. The groundhogs are very skittish and would surely run off as soon as I tried to open the door. So, I went over to my office window (which was already open) and snapped a few frames. Indeed, they were alert: they had no problem hearing the shutter firing from about 50 feet away and only hung around long enough for me to get a small burst of shots.