We were driving out of our subdivision, minding our own business, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted it.  Grayish-brown, beaver-like, unexpected on that kudzu-infected hill, the creature crawled down on all fours, its full tail trailing behind it. 

I stopped the car and demanded that the kids look.  (Oh man!  My camera was at home!)

The creature must have suspected it had been spotted.  It stopped moving and stood still.  Very still.  If I hadn't known it was there, I never would have seen it.  I could not, for the life of me, get the kids to discern its position.  Blasted camouflage!

Then, feeling a false sense of security, it began to move again.  Six-year-old Anna spotted it this time!  Poor Claire, though, was devastated.  I rolled down the window and the creature stopped moving again.  After a moment, it moved again, and this time disappeared in what must be its den. 

I was sure we had lost it forever.  Claire and Audrey were crushed.  Drew was blissfully ignorant, though a bit impatient that we get moving!  Then, it popped out of its hole in the ground.  It stood on top of the den and had a look around.  And finally, Audrey, then Claire, spotted the creature.  It bobbed up and down a bit, looked around, did a bit of grooming, then moved back underground, not to emerge again.

Reluctantly, five minutes after stopping, we moved on.  We tried guessing at what this creature might be.  The girls thought it was a mole and I couldn't convince them that it was just too big and, well, un-mole-like.  Then they insisted it was a beaver.  But it was living on land, across the street from the pond.  And, though its body did look very beaver-esque, its tail was definitely not of the beaver variety.  A raccoon?  No, wrong coloring, wrong face, wrong body shape.....raccoons even this city girl can identify! 

My guess was a groundhog.  I had only really seen a groundhog before in the movie "Groundhog Day".  I love that movie.  (My husband thinks I'm nuts!)   But I'd never seen one crawl down a hill before. 

Sure enough, when we got home, we googled various rodent-type creatures and, lo and behold!, it was indeed a groundhog.....which is the same as a woodchuck, and is also sometimes called a land beaver.  So in a way, the girls were right in their beaver assessment!

Not bad, for a midmorning trip to the store!  You just never know when -- or where -- you'll enjoy nature study!

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