"Woodchuck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Webster, the father of Daniel, was a farmer. The vegetables in his garden had suffered considerably from the depredations of a woodchuck, which had his hole or habitation near the premises. Daniel, some ten or twelve years old, and his older brother Ezekiel, had set a trap, and finally succeeded ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... excitement, stepped in a woodchuck hole, spilling a bowl of steaming hot soup down the Fat ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Nimrod caught a woodchuck to-day, a baby one, and we called him Johnny. Johnny stayed with us all day in his cage, while Nimrod made a sketch of him and I took his picture. Then, in the late afternoon, we took him back to his home in the stone-clad hill, and put him among his brothers and sisters, ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... we have caught the woodchuck and we do not know what to do with him. We have brought the matter to you to settle. Ezekiel wants to kill him and I want to ...
— History Plays for the Grammar Grades • Mary Ella Lyng
... on tight enough,—why, bless me! after I once got 'em strapped on, if them skates hed come off, the feet w'u'd ha' come with 'em! An' now away we go,—Laura an' me. Around the bend—near the medder where Si Barker's dog killed a woodchuck last summer—we meet the rest. We forget all about the cold. We run races an' play snap the whip, an' cut all sorts o' didoes, an' we never mind the pick'rel weed that is froze in on the ice an' trips us up every time we cut the outside edge; an' then we boys jump over the airholes, an' the girls ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... his wild hurry he tried to wrench it out. A sudden, sharp pain rewarded this insane effort. He lost his balance and went sprawling to the ground, another quick, excruciating twinge accompanying his fall, and lay there on the soggy ground like a woodchuck in a trap. ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... worship in the fields and woods, if at all; one was for a phalanstery, where all should live in common, and another was meditating the plan and place of the wigwam where he was to dwell apart in the proud independence of the woodchuck and the musquash. Emerson had the largest and kindliest sympathy with their ideals and aims, but he was too clear-eyed not to see through the whims and extravagances of the unpractical experimenters who would construct a working world with the lay figures they had put together, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... used to take reefs in the sides of the jacket and use the cloth to piece onto the bottoms of the trousers' legs." What Captain Joe means is that the houses in the village are all built beside three roads running longitudinally. There is the "main road" and the "upper road"—or "Woodchuck Lane," just as you prefer—and the "lower road," otherwise known ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a venturesome chipmunk among some little frost-bitten beeches. Isaac Brown had a wonderfully pleasant way of getting on with all sorts of animals, even men. After a while they rose and went their way, these two companions, stopping here and there to look at a possible woodchuck's hole, or to strike a few hopeful blows at a hollow tree with the light axe which Isaac had carried to blaze new marks on some of the line-trees on the farther edge of their possessions. Sometimes they stopped to admire the size of an old hemlock, or ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... subsist during winter, remaining for most of the time near their hiding-places, which, however, they may frequently leave upon warm days. A third method is less common, but very interesting. The groundhog or woodchuck is the best-known example of the group. It remains asleep, or, as it is technically known, dormant, during the winter. This stupor is more profound than ordinary sleep, and from it these animals awaken with difficulty. It is needless to remark ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... mild, gray weather. If the woodchuck stirs up his banked life-fire and ventures forth, he will not see his shadow, and must straightway arrange with winter for a rebate in our favour. To-day, however, it seems like the very dawn of winter, and as if the cloud brooms were abroad gathering ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... He made men and gave them life, and made the winds to make the waters move. The Turtle was his uncle; the Mink, Uk-see-meezel, his adopted son; and Monin-kwessos, the Woodchuck, his grandmother. The Beaver built a great dam, and Glus-gahbe turned it away and killed the Beaver. At Moose-tchick he killed a moose; the bones may be seen at Bar Harbor turned to stone. He threw the entrails of the Moose across the bay to his dogs, and they, too, may be seen there to this ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... tumbled into a catfish-hole by the dam, and he fished me out; and once, while he had crawled in after a woodchuck, a rock slipped and pinned him down, and I ran two miles to get help, and fell in a faint before I could tell them where he was. What Aleck had in those days I had, and what I had he had; and there was no difference between us ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the capybaras sought refuge in flight through the tangled marsh. They ran well. Kermit and Fiala went after one on foot, full-speed, for a mile and a half, with two hounds which then bayed it—literally bayed it, for the capybara fought with the courage of a gigantic woodchuck. If the pack overtook a capybara, they of course speedily finished it; but a single dog of our not very valorous outfit was not able to overmatch its ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... up the stairs, and Somers gave himself up for lost. The extra lamp would certainly expose him, to say nothing of the pole; and it seemed to be folly to remain there, and be punched with a stick, like a woodchuck in his hole. Besides, there is something in tumbling down gracefully, when one must inevitably tumble; and he was disposed to surrender gracefully, as the coon did when he learned that Colonel Crockett was about to fire and bring him down. There was no hope; and it is bad generalship, ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... dirty brown thing," stammered Bab, as the dog came uppermost for a minute, and then rooted into Ben's jacket as if he smelt a woodchuck, and was bound to have him ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... used to sit up on his hind legs, fold his front paws, and look at you in the summer time, then give a low whistle and duck; meadow mice in their cozy tunnels through which the water will be pouring when the spring freshets come; the woodchuck in his long, long sleep, and the chipmunk with his winter store of food. And so watching, listening, and musing you come at length to the western edge of the woodland and look across the prairie, far as the eye can reach, to where the red ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... The woodchuck is a nuisance to the farmer, covering his field with loads of subsoil from the burrow and then eating the tender sprouts; and the farmer does not know enough to eat his tender corpse, but he is good to eat. If a rabbit and a chicken could ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... knife in fore center of pad or feet and paws and with a gentle push carry these incisions upon back of wrists and inside of ankles to where swell of large muscles is felt. In mammals the size of woodchuck or raccoon, split ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... There is something in intense cold which is inhuman. When men are shut up together in exile by it, all that is bad in them is likely to crop out. It might have been worse but for the fortunate friendliness of the Skroelings. When scurvy appeared in the camp, their first acquaintance, Munumqueh (woodchuck) had his women brew a drink which cured it. He showed the white men also how to make pemmican, the compressed meat ration of native hunters, and how to construct and use a birch canoe, a pair of snowshoes, and a fire-drill. Gustav Sigerson died in the spring, ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... drifted to the future. He had no fear of starvation, for Mose could catch a rabbit or woodchuck at any time. When the strips of meat he had hidden in his coat were gone, he could start a fire and roast more. What concerned him most was pursuit. His trail from the cabin had been a bloody one, which would render it easily ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... afraid I'm a little bit doubtful. I should want my camel on wheels, with a railin' around his hump. But YOU must feel lost enough down in this tame place, Mr. Bangs. The wildest thing around here is a woodchuck." ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... he came in with a woodchuck skin and told the girls to fill it with wild wheat flour. He did not tell them what he wanted it for. When the skin was full he left the campoodie without a word as to where he was going. But the bag leaked and a little stream of flour trickled out and marked his ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... and manifestations. Nobody in this world could have a tenderer heart than Hetty: this also she had inherited or learned from her grandfather. Many a day the two had spent together in nursing a sick or maimed chicken, or a half-frozen lamb, even a woodchuck that had got its leg broken in a trap was not an outcast to them; and as for beggars and tramps, not one passed "Gunn's," from June till October, that was not hailed by the old squire from under his lilac-bush, and fed by Hetty. ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... that wakes in laughing day, Health that mocks the doctor's rules, Knowledge never learned of schools, Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild-flower's time and place, Flight of fowl and habitude Of the tenants of the wood; How the tortoise bears his shell, How the woodchuck digs his cell, And the ground-mole sinks his well; How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... said. "I was only joking. I'm too busy to bother with you, anyhow. I have a little matter to attend to in the pasture. There's a Woodchuck up ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... got some distance yet," he said to Sam. "Dawg was goin' steady as a woodchuck ten mile' from water. Reckon my guess was right,—he wore his pads out crossin' the lava beds, though what in time any hombre who ain't plumb loco is trapesin' round there for, beats me. There is some grazin' on top of the Cumbre mesa, enough for a small herd, but the other ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... boy smiled and nodded. He had never seen a woodchuck, but there was a picture of one in his animal-book. It wasn't ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... The woodchuck does considerable damage even though we have eliminated all their dens on our land. They come in to feed from the neighboring areas and will have to be controlled by shooting. Deer are also present but have ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... and started. Springing up from where he had been watching every expression of his master's face, the shaggy collie bounded around him as he moved across the lawn, while the woman watched them with a proud and happy smile. They had scarcely entered the long lane leading to the pasture, when a woodchuck shambled out of the corner of the fence and ran lumbering into his burrow. Rushing excitedly after him the child clapped his hands and shouted: "Dig him out! Dig him out, Shep!" Tearing up the ground with his paws and thrusting his head down into the subterranean chamber, the obedient ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... they ate," said Mr. Crow. And he went right on talking. "On Thursday Mr. Woodchuck went to visit his cousins in the West. Mrs. Woodchuck ...
— The Tale of Brownie Beaver • Arthur Scott Bailey
... could order correctly their famous cuts by looking at my watch, knowing at what hour the mutton was ready, at what hour the roast beef was rarest. So long have I worn English shirts that even now I find myself crawling into the American brand after the manner of the woodchuck burrowing into his hole. Frequently I find myself proffering dimes to the fair uniformed vestals of our theatres who present me with programmes. I have read each separate slab in Westminster Abbey. ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... or a big woodchuck. Won't his fur make a fine cap? I guess the other fellows will wish they'd come with us." said Tommy, prancing to and fro, without the least idea what ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... clothes look, Kitty! I think they bleach even whiter here than they used to in the old drying yard. But I am sorry you ironed that white waist of mine: I was going to do it myself. Now, Sunshine, come and tell Aunt Kitty about the woodchuck and her baby that we saw; and how we caught little chucky, as you called him; ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... time, and before many minutes I again saw the mimic sky glance through the trees. As we approached the lake, a solitary woodchuck, the first wild animal we had seen since entering the woods, sat crouched upon the root of a tree a few feet from the water, apparently completely nonplused by the unexpected appearance of danger on the land side. All retreat was cut ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... a woodchuck that he had penned up as a boy, and he hoped with extraordinary passion that the poor beast had made another hole. Never again, he resolved, would he pen up a living creature, never again, if only again he could see the light of day and breathe ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... and without aspiring to literary judgment. "Thoreau's 'Walden' is capital reading, but very wicked and heathenish. The practical moral of it seems to be that if a man is willing to sink himself into a woodchuck he can live as cheaply as that quadruped; but after all, for me, I prefer walking ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... "More likely a woodchuck's hole, or a squirrel track. Besides," he added, with a smile, as he dropped into his chair again, "these broomsticks of mine have collapsed once to-day, and I am becoming cautious. It has been ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... children sometimes saw, and which may be seen occasionally in the pastures and pine forests, in all parts of our country, from Maine to Carolina, was the woodchuck, or ground-hog, as it is sometimes called. It feeds, generally, upon clover and other succulent vegetables, and hence it is often injurious to the farmer. It is said to bring forth four or five young at a litter. Its gait is awkward, ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... was! Beaten smooth with the passing of many bare feet, it wound through the brush and round the big pines, past the haunts of squirrels, black, gray, and red, past fox holes and woodchuck holes, under birds' nests and bee-trees, and best of all, it brought up at last at the Deep Hole, or "Deepole," as the ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... sleep. The wood-chuck, a marmot and a strategist, makes his burrow in the middle of a field, where he must see you ere you see him. Now and again a dog manages to cut him off his base, and the battle is worth crossing fields to watch. But the woodchuck turned in long ago, and will not be out till April. The coon lives—well, no one seems to know particularly where Brer Coon lives, but when the Hunter's Moon is large and full he descends into the corn-lands, and men chase him with dogs for his fur, which ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... The marmot or woodchuck, is an impudent and cautious animal and he is a difficult mark for a bowman's aim. But nothing has more comic situations than an afternoon spent in a ground-hog village. After an incontinent scuttle to his ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... compass, and landscape features. His purpose was to learn about the wild animals rather than to kill them; but the naturalist is close kin to the sportsman, and the gun was his constant companion. In the clearing, the only animal of any size was a fat Woodchuck; it had a hole under a stump some hundred yards from the shanty. On sunny mornings it used to lie basking on the stump, but eternal vigilance is the price of every good thing in the woods. The Woodchuck was always alert and Thor tried ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... our wild woodland neighbours made us some trouble. It was no other than a veritable woodchuck, whose hole we had often wondered at when we were scrambling through the underbrush after spring flowers. The hole was about the size of a peck-measure, and had two openings about six feet apart. The occupant was a gentleman we ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the poet in an artistically-modulated whisper, "I have long, long followed you in the high course of your career. To me the priceless simplicity of poverty: to you the responsibility for millions. To me the daisy, the mountain stream, the woodchuck and my Art! To you the busy mart, the haunts of men, the ship of finance laden with a nation's wealth, the awful burden of millions for which you are answerable to One higher!" He ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... pasture and find me a woodchuck to chase," Spot said to himself, for he was in such high spirits that he simply had to have fun of ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the fields, only to arrive, out of breath, at the entrance to a burrow down which the woodchuck had tumbled. He had not a notion where he was. He seemed to have raced out of the world that he knew into one which was quite unfamiliar. It was a broad valley inclosed by high hills, through which a pleasant little river ran; and the landscape wore an odd aspect—the hills were ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... field where the battle had taken place, much to his surprise, he saw his friend Woodchuck snooping around among the ruins. When Coonie reached him, he sat up on his hind feet and began ...
— Hazel Squirrel and Other Stories • Howard B. Famous
... the man afraid to know anything about anything!" broke in the blacksmith. "One week! He's four or five months, or I'm a woodchuck." ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... knowledge of nature was so complete and curious that he could have told the time of year, within a day or so, by the aspect of the plants. In his dealings with animals, he was the original of Hawthorne's Donatello. He pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail; the hunted fox came to him for protection; wild squirrels have been seen to nestle in his waistcoat; he would thrust his arm into a pool and bring forth a bright, panting fish, lying undismayed in the palm ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... personnel to run and take cover during the bombardment. I saw this happen twice, and I learned of numerous other cases. Cover underground is constructed for all the personnel of the batteries. One enters these subterranean quarters through entrances which look very much like enlarged woodchuck holes. With no artillery of any nationality did I see any gun entrenchment other than a slight mound of earth coming up to the bottom of the shield. All guns that I have seen were in a line, except in cases where there was some peculiar rising of terrain. I have several times seen a "group" ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... suit, and to take the greatest care of it. Old King Bear appeared every day in a suit of glossy black. Lightfoot the Deer, threw away his dingy gray suit, and put on a coat of beautiful red and fawn. Mr. Mink, Mr. Otter, Mr. Muskrat, Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Woodchuck, Mr. Coon, who you know was first cousin to old King Bear, Mr. Gray Squirrel, Mr. Fox Squirrel, Mr. Red Squirrel, all put on brand new suits. Mr. Skunk changed his black and white stripes for a suit of all black, very handsome, ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... kept doughnuts in a yellow crock with a blue plate over it on the bottom shelf of the pantry—and they do! He wanted to know if there was still a woodchuck's hole under the pile of rocks in the night pasture—and there is! Amasai caught a big, fat, grey one there this summer, the twenty-fifth great-grandson of the one Master Jervis caught when ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... in the woods where there is no longer any large game are the chipmunk, the red, the gray, and the black squirrel, the rabbit and hare, the fox, weasel, pine-marten, woodchuck, raccoon, opossum, and skunk, also the pack-rat (of the west), the white-footed and field mouse. In deeper and wilder forests there are deer and porcupine, though deer are found quite near habitations at times. In more remote places there are the moose and caribou; the bear, ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... this? All in a minute, something happened. The black put his foot in a hole,—a woodchuck's burrow,—stumbled, pitched forward, and threw Peggy heavily to the ground. He recovered himself in a moment, and stood trembling; but Peggy lay still. Margaret was at her side in an instant. The child ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south, where a woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, down through sumac and blackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze in any winter. The sides were left shelving, and not stoned; but the sun ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... thought, he could think of no one whom he might ask. To be sure, there was Tommy Fox, who was known to be an able digger. But Jolly Robin didn't trust him. Tommy Fox was tricky. And there was Billy Woodchuck, who came from a famous family of burrowers. But everybody knew that old dog Spot had chased him into his hole that very afternoon, and was watching Billy's ...
— The Tale of Grunty Pig - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... at once of the oldest man in the township, who was only eighty-four and not very bright. I can remember bragging at school about Gran'ther Pendleton, who'd be eighty-nine come next Woodchuck day, and could see to read without glasses. He had been ailing all his life, ever since the fever he took in the war. He used to remark triumphantly that he had now outlived six doctors who had each given him but a year to live; 'and the seventh is going downhill fast, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... at all strange that Mrs. Rabbit and Mrs. Squirrel and Mrs. Woodchuck—as well as a good many other people—did not care to have their sons in Peter Mink's company. They said that any one who went about looking as untidy as he did, and without a home, was not likely to set a good example ...
— The Tale of Peter Mink - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... said at length, "that's 'baout the way I talked wen the war wuz a goin on, an if I rekullec, ye, Peleg, an ye, Abner Rathbun and Meshech Little, thar on the floor, tuk arter me with yer guns and dorgs caze ye said I wuz a dum Tory. An ye hunted me on Stockbridge mounting like a woodchuck, an ye'd a hed my skelp fer sartin ef I hadn't been a durn sight smarter ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... cleared out the frozen turf and leaves to a depth of four or five feet, gradually working down where they could look back beneath the root. We had begun to doubt whether we would find anything there larger than a woodchuck. ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... Stub—Stub was happy. He spent the long days in the foothills or on the mountain-side, and soon became expert in his hunting. He would trail for hours without giving tongue, and would patiently lie and wait for a glimpse of a venturesome woodchuck or squirrel. So devoted was he, so well trained, and so keenly alive was he to his responsibilities that, whether the day had been one of great or small success, he was always to be found at night crouching before the cabin door on guard ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... The beautiful little, often-tamed Woodchuck, is another American marmot. It makes a deep burrow in the sides of hills, lining the chamber at the inner end with dry leaves and grass. It may frequently be seen by the traveller running rapidly along the tops of fences, as if to keep company ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... resemble the familiar green or striped serpent of your own peaceful fields. Neither do the tigers, which I shall presently have the honor of showing to you (renewed sensation), bear any marked affinity to the serene woodchuck that burrows in your happy hills. The sunrises and sunsets, the boa constrictors, the tigers, and the other phenomena of Africa, are all immense, gorgeous, and peculiar. They must be judged by themselves, and not by comparison. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... hopped down the path until he met Wallie Woodpecker. "Willie Woodchuck is whittling because he has nothing better to ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... me come back here by ourselves, at the earliest o' daybreak, afore the people git about. Then we kin gie them tracks a thorrer scrutination. If they don't prove to be Dick Darke's, ye may call Sime Woodley a thick-headed woodchuck." ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... I contend. A few dollars will pay for the venison; but what will requite me for the lost honor of a bucks tail in my cap? Think, Natty, how I should triumph over that quizzing dog, Dick Jones, who has failed seven times already this season, and has only brought in one woodchuck and ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... and the children stay perishing at home? she guessed not. If Florida was good for David, it was good for her, too, and she laid up ever sence spring, as she might say, and with no more outing than a woodchuck in January. Besides, who was to take care of David, she'd like to know? Mis' Porter's folks, who had a place there? She'd like to know if she was to be beholden to Jane Porter's folks for taking care of her lawful husband, and like enough laying him out, for she wasn't one to blind ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... fer yer, mas'r," he continued; "you won't want for nothin'. An' we won't kep yer in dis woodchuck hole arter nine ob de ev'nin'. Don't try ter come out. I'm lookin' t'oder way while I'se a-talkin. Mean niggers an' 'Federates may be spyin' aroun'. But I reckon not; I'se laid in de woods all ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... as Paddy Muskrat and Billy Woodchuck, liked him because he was good-natured. They always smiled pleasantly when they spoke of him. And unfriendly folk, such as Peter Mink and Tommy Fox, liked him because he was fat. When they mentioned him they always grinned horribly ...
— The Tale of Master Meadow Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Crow, the Woodchuck brothers stepped forward and started to whistle a lively tune, called "Clover Blossoms." Being very fond of clover blossoms, the musicians began whistling in a most spirited fashion. ...
— The Tale of Major Monkey • Arthur Scott Bailey
... a snow bank; it affords him no protection. "Pot that woodchuck," shouts Captain Grout ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... was anything I could have asked that pair that they would not have done. If I expressed a wish to have a pair of young squirrels for pets, they were sure to be obtained, just as the raccoon was, and the woodchuck. If I wished to fish, the baits were ready and the boat cleaned out; while if I told Hannibal I wanted him to come and row for me, his black face shone with pleasure, and he would toil on in the hot sun, hour after hour, with the oars, ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... to bed and have a dream. In your dream it seems to you that a fox terrier is chasing a woodchuck around and around the inside of your head. In that tangled sort of fashion peculiar to dreams your sympathy seems to go out first to the fox terrier and then to the woodchuck as they circle about nimbly, leaping from your tonsils to your larynx and ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... even had I had the necessary self-possession, for me to take aim and fire, and had I done so it would almost certainly have increased the danger, for my gun was loaded only with a charge for a partridge or woodchuck. ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... 1. The woodchuck is about twice the size of the common rabbit. Its body is thick, and it has short legs, armed with ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... bought me a dog and he was my constant companion for many years. At the age of five years I began to make Bows and arrows, and cross guns, likewise sling shots. My first experience was with by bros, George and Lee in killing a woodchuck. And from this time my adventures began to multiply. All kinds of small animals fell before ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... greeting you, it is often a surface of red mud, as if the surface had been enameled or electrotyped with mud. It appears to date from the first muddy day of creation. I have such a one for my doorstone at Woodchuck Lodge. It is amusing to see the sweepers and scrubbers of doorstones fall upon it with soap and hot water, and utterly fail to make any impression upon it. Nowhere else have I seen rocks casehardened with primal mud. The fresh-water origin of the Catskill rocks ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... speeding across the snow. In another five minutes he was peering like a woodchuck from his hole in the snowbank. His batteries were already inside. If he had not been observed, he had only to block his entrance and leave the wind to plaster it over ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... frightened the wild animals and gave the Indians warning. Jimmie liked to pretend. He liked to fill the woods with wary and hostile adversaries. It was a game of his own inventing. If he crept to the top of a hill and, on peering over it, surprised a fat woodchuck, he pretended the woodchuck was a bear, weighing two hundred pounds; if, himself unobserved, he could lie and watch, off its guard, a rabbit, squirrel, or, most difficult of all, a crow, it became a deer and that night at supper Jimmie made believe he was eating ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... there's a queer lot of fixings. [Sees shower bath.] What on airth is that? Looks like a 'skeeter net, only it 'ain't long enough for a feller to lay down in unless he was to coil himself up like a woodchuck in a knot hole. I'd just like to know what the all-fired thing is meant for. [Calls.] Say Puffy, Puffy, Oh! he told me if I wanted him to ring the bell. [Looks round room.] Where on airth is the bell? [Slips partly ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... or on that morning when I saw her dead, that I felt as completely forlorn as I did that day when I turned away from my mother, and went down the mountain-side back to my own place alone. The squirrels chattered at me, and the woodpecker rat-tat-tat-ed, and the woodchuck scurried away, and I hated them all. What company were they to me? I was lonely, and I craved the companionship of ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... man, and "Come" to another, like the ruler of old; but all his natural power of leadership and habit of authority disappeared at once as he trod the pasture slopes, calling back the remembrance of his childhood. Here was the place where two lads, older than himself, had killed a terrible woodchuck at bay in the angle of a great rock; and just beyond was the sunny spot where he had picked a bunch of pink and white anemones under a prickly barberry thicket, to give to Abby Harran in morning school. She had put them into her desk, and let them wilt there, but she was pleased ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... squirrel from the mossy oak limb it hugs so closely, the red fox from the ruddy or brown or gray field, the rabbit from the stubble, or the white hare from the snow, requires the best powers of this sense. A woodchuck motionless in the fields or upon a rock looks very much like a large stone or boulder, yet a keen eye knows the difference at a glance, a ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... fire a hunted man had burst, just as she had seen a rabbit and a belated woodchuck bursting. And that man had lain himself down to die. And here, of all places, he had found the hand of the mighty, the omnipresent Catholic Church reached out ready ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... maple dropped their leaves, a rustling carpet about their feet. Wedges of wild geese winged their way southward through the trackless sky, making the nights vocal with their honking. The bear, woodchuck, skunk, raccoon and chipmunk, fat from their summer feeding, had retired to den or hollow tree where they were to sleep snugly through ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... crest of what was hardly worthy the name of hill, which sloped downward into what they called the "flats," through which the creek ran. The barn stood very close to uncleared woodland, and the banks ending the woodland showed a decidedly rocky exterior. Appleman, chasing a woodchuck one day, had seen him scurry into a hole in this rocky surface, and prying away with a handspike had unloosed a small mass of rock and discovered a cave; not much of a cave, it is true, but one of at least twenty feet in length and eight or ten in breadth, and full six feet in height. This discovery ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... of life, when, as a matter of fact, he has all the time there is, all that anybody has—to wit, this moment, this great and golden moment!—but knows not how to employ it. He creeps when he might walk, walks when he might run, runs when he might fly—and lives like a woodchuck in the ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... replied Martin, who had entered; "he knows well how to use and how to take care of it and take care of himself. I let him bring it home on purpose to watch him. He has fired and loaded twice as we came back, and has killed this woodchuck," continued Martin, throwing the dead animal on the floor. "Old Malachi has taught him well, and he has not forgotten ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... outside cold, The bitter wind unheeded blew, From ripening corn the pigeons flew, The partridge drummed i' the wood, the mink Went fishing down the river-brink. In fields with bean or clover gay, The woodchuck, like a hermit gray, Peered from the doorway of his cell; The muskrat plied the mason's trade, And tier by tier his mud-walls laid; And from the shagbark overhead The ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... of the bank vault itself, the one deep-hidden and masonry-embedded area which stood without its ever-vigilant closed-circuit sentry. And he knew that Heeney had grubbed and eaten and burrowed his way, like a woodchuck, to the very heart of ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... thoroughly enjoyed himself. He felt quite grown-up as he parted with Percy at Sloane Street, and drove home, singing to himself the refrain of Pickering's favourite song: "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck would ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... out with his gun, he saw something moving near an old woodchuck hole; at least, there had been woodchucks ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... manifested in our architecture. A purely native town in Italy, Arabia, or Africa, or Mexico, has its own atmosphere; no one could mistake one for the other any more than he could mistake a beaver dam for an ant hill or a bird's nest for a woodchuck hole. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... can learn little, and perform less. For example, all the training in the world could not suffice to put a pig through a performance that a chimpanzee or orang could master in two weeks. The reason is that the pig has not the brain power that is indispensable. A woodchuck never could become the mental equal of a wood rat (Neotoma). A sheep could not hope to rival a horse, either in ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... roam the neighborhood. It was five weeks before we found trace of her, and then only by accident. My sister was passing a field of grain, and caught a glimpse of a small creature which she at first thought to be a woodchuck. She turned and looked at it, and called "Pussy, pussy," when with a heart-breaking little cry of utter delight and surprise, our beloved cat came toward her. From the first, the wide expanse of the country had confused her; she had evidently "lost her bearings" and was probably ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... Melancthon Coon, and Jim Crow, and Wellington Woodchuck, and Billy Rabbit, and Major Partridge saw Robert Robin flying through the bare woods, or heard him singing his clear notes from the top of his big basswood tree, they would say to themselves, "Robert Robin is back from the south, and Spring will soon be here." ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... Hoboken, while the cab waits. Get your things on, everybody, while I telephone." He allowed no loitering; he waved the girls away, sent the waiter scurrying with his bill, helped Robert secure hat and stick, and then dove into a telephone-booth as a woodchuck enters its hole. When he had disposed his three charges inside a taxi-cab he disappeared briefly, to return with a basket of champagne upon his arm. It is a wise general who provides himself in ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... The common woodchuck is a grizzly brown on the back, chestnut on the breast, blackish on the crown and paws, and whitish on the cheeks. Its short ears and bushy tail are important characteristics. It measures about twenty-four inches ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... Comstock's tales of Big Foot and Adam Poe, boasting that Uncle Wesley had been in the camps of Me-shin-go-me-sia and knew Wa-ca-co-nah before he got religion and dressed like white men; while the mighty prowess of Snap as a woodchuck hunter was done full justice. When they reached the cottage Philip took Billy aside, showed him the emerald ring and gravely asked his permission to marry Elnora. Billy struggled to be just, but it was going hard with him, when Alice, who kept ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... haunts of living men, among trees and grapevines, and blueberry bushes. The depression in the soil indicated that the perishable remains had long ago crumbled to dust, while a large hole burrowed in the earth showed where a woodchuck made its home among the bones of the forgotten dead. With reverent hand I cleared the leaves from about the primitive monuments, and sought for some word or letter that might tell who they were that lay beneath the silver birches, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... sit, side by side, and every once in a while look fearfully around, so public seemed that open space. But all we ever saw for our pains was a squirrel or perhaps a woodchuck looking around fearfully, too. Jeanette would sit with her hands braced behind her, her tumbled hair splashing down over her shoulders and down her back. The setting sun would come skipping over the hills and play in her ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... unreal and mocking until the landscape has human figures, that are as good as itself.' And 'tis well, if they are but half as good. To me, the discovery of a woodman in the wadi were as pleasing as the discovery of a woodchuck or a woodswallow or a woodbine. For in the soul of the woodman is a song, I muse, as sweet as the rhythmic strains of the goldfinch, if it could be evoked. But the soul plodding up the hill under its heavy overshadowing burden, what breath has it left for song? The man bowed beneath ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... hunter in the woodland country had a dog which was particularly fond of certain kinds of game, but exceedingly averse to other kinds of much better flavor. Now it happened that, whenever the hunter wished to give chase to moose or deer, Jowler was sure to scare up a woodchuck, or some still filthier game, leaving the deer to ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston
... offence! New England ideas of profanity were very rigid, and New England men had reason to guard well their temper and tongue, else that latter member might be bored with a hot iron; for such was the penalty for profanity. We know what horror Mr. Tomlins's wicked profanity, "Curse ye woodchuck!" caused in Lynn meeting, and Mr. Dexter was "putt in ye billboes ffor prophane saying dam ye cowe." The Newbury doctor was sharply fined also for wickedly cursing. When drinking at the tavern he raised his ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... matter become, as it were, a new creation, and one can believe anything when he sees how many forms life and matter can assume under the mellowing rays of the sun. The clod becomes a flower; the egg a reptile, fish, or bird. The cunning woodchuck, that looks out of his hole on the awakening earth and blue sky, seems almost to have a sense of the miracle that has been wrought. The boy who throws a stone at him, to drive him back into the earth, seems less sensible of nature than he. It is a pleasing sight ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... dirty brown thing," stammered Bab, as the dog came uppermost for a minute, and then rooted into Ben's jacket as if he smelt a woodchuck and was bound to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... declare! Talk about a feller's comin' back to his own. Whose shanty is that? Well, it's mine, if you want to know. The power that looks out for the lame and the lazy has hove us ashore on Woodchuck Island, and that's a piece of ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the kind known to be native is the jutia, sometimes spelled, as pronounced, hutia. Some observers have referred to it as a rat, but it climbs trees and grows to the size of a woodchuck, or groundhog. It is sometimes eaten and is said to be quite palatable. Reptiles are fairly common, but none of them is dangerous. The best known is the maja, a snake that grows to a length, sometimes, of ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... roots, nuts, and berries. Its dangerous fore-claws are normally used to overturn stones and knock rotten logs to pieces, that it may lap up the small tribes of darkness which swarm under the one and in the other. It digs up the camas roots, wild onions, and an occasional luckless woodchuck or gopher. If food is very plenty bears are lazy, but commonly they are obliged to be very industrious, it being no light task to gather enough ants, beetles, crickets, tumble-bugs, roots, and nuts to satisfy ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... greased. In a second he had got hold of the feller's neck with his big right hand and hooked his left into the cloth on his hip. In that way he held him off and shook him as you've seen our dog shake a woodchuck. Abe's blood was hot. If the whole crowd had piled on him I guess he would have come out all right, for when he's roused there's something in Abe more than bones and muscles. I suppose it's what I feel when he speaks a piece. It's ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... most of his life, in later years he has become robust, and now (1913) is the only surviving member of the family besides Mr. Burroughs. He is cheery and loquacious, methodical and orderly, and very punctilious in dress. (One day, in the summer of 1912, when he was calling at "Woodchuck Lodge,"—the summer home where Mr. Burroughs has lived of late years, near the old place where he was born,—this brother recounted some of their youthful exploits, especially the one which yielded the material for the essay "A White Day and a Red Fox." "I shot the fox and got five dollars for ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... we have the Panther and Black Bear in the wooded portions of the State, though rare; the Lynx, the Gray and Black Wolf, and the Prairie Wolf; the Skunk, the Badger, the Woodchuck, the Raccoon, and, in the southern part of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... long as it is one of their own tribe. A fox will take all he can get from a bird or a rabbit or a woodchuck, but he won't go far on the hunting grounds of another fox. He won't go into another fox's den or touch one of its young ones, and if he finds a cache of food with another fox's mark on it, he won't touch it unless he is near dead ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... matter how hungry Fido might be. So he kicked out and barely touched him. Instantly the brute set up a terrible "ki-yi-ing!" and shot off the porch and disappeared into the darkness. Evidently the Blodgetts kept the animal for its bark, for it did not have the pluck of a woodchuck! ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... last, one fine fall evening he went to see Aunt Polly Woodchuck, who was an herb doctor; for he had begun to ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... All Souls', All Souls' Day; Ash Wednesday, bicentennial, birthday, bissextile[obs3], Candlemas[obs3], Dewali, groundhog day [U.S.], Halloween, Hallowmas[obs3], Lady day, leap year, Midsummer day, Muharram, woodchuck day [U.S.], St. Swithin's day, natal day; yearbook; yuletide. punctuality, regularity, steadiness. V. recur in regular order, recur in regular succession; return, revolve; come again, come in its turn; come round, come round ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... tall bell-shaped hat, a hat he had worn all his life on the Sabbath and at funerals. Nor do I think he had, during his manhood, more than one best suit of clothing. In winter he always wore a long woolen frock made by his wife, and a cap of woodchuck skin. Folks said it was like to be a hard winter when he put on his overcoat. His complexion was as dark as an Indian's; eyes as black as night, and he had straight raven hair. He used much tobacco, always a quid in his mouth except when it was a pipe. He mostly refrained on the ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... got the work started again with a new set of timbers, I spent three or four days on the ground digging for information like a dog after a woodchuck. There are some prospectors panning on the bar three miles up the Gloria, but they knew nothing—or if they knew they wouldn't tell. That was the case with every man I talked to on our side of the river. But over across the Timanyoni, nearly opposite the mouth of the Gloria, there is ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... Browny the Woodchuck had informed him that he was in the North Woods when he waded up on shore, but Browny had an important engagement with his family, and immediately left him. Happy and excited that he was now free in the woods, and no longer in danger of being pursued and captured, Buster for a time was satisfied ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... machine gun and put an eleven-pound high-explosive "Stokes" under it. Three or four Germans appeared, running down communication trenches, and the bombers sent a few Millses after them. Then we came to a dug-out door—in fact, several, as Fritz, like a woodchuck, always has more than one entrance to his burrow. We broke these in in jig time and looked down a thirty-foot hole on a dug-out full of graybacks. There must have been a lot of them. I could plainly see four or five faces looking up ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... if he had half a mind not to tell the story, but Peter looked so innocent and so eager that he began again. "Once upon a time lived the great-great-ever-so-great-grandfather of Yap-Yap, the very first of all the Prairie Dogs, and his name was Yap-Yap too. He was own cousin to old Mr. Woodchuck, who of course wasn't old then, and the two cousins looked much alike, save that Yap-Yap was a little smaller than Mr. Woodchuck and ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... meetin'-house hill, an' go huckleberryin'; uv how I jumped into the pond one day an' saved him from bein' drownded; uv the spellin' school, the huskin' bees, the choir meetin's, the sparkin' times; of the swimmin' hole, the crow's nest in the pine-tree, the woodchuck's hole in the old pasture lot; uv the sunny summer days an' the snug winter nights when we wuz boys, ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... my small sister said of the red-squirrel that hung around the log-barn. And some of the animals seemed to take a very lively interest in us. The chipmunks came into the house occasionally, on foraging expeditions; and so, I regret to say, did the skunks. There was a woodchuck who used to come to the back door, looking for scraps, and who learned to sit bolt upright and hold a pancake in his fore paws while he nibbled at it, without being in the least disturbed by the presence and the comments of half a dozen spectators. ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... stationed to keep watch, thinking his master's property was in danger, flew at the boy, and caught him by the arm. Poor Jake! he yelled lustily, you may be sure. But it did no good. Ranter held him in his jaws, as tight as if he were a woodchuck or a ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... the unnerved men to action, but he could find no sort of tool for himself, and stood empty-handed apart, conscious of unfitness. The politician, burrowing like a woodchuck, showered ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... all-American Tomato Rabbit with brown sugar was named after the native woodchuck, in playful imitation of the Scotch Woodcock above. It's the only Rabbit we know that's ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... the Mohawk Bowmen ranged the woods and fields till sunset found them at home again, tired, indeed, but enthusiastic over archery and their day's sport. They agreed it was the happiest day they had ever seen, and arranged for a grand woodchuck ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... repletion; the conical heaps of small stones on the river-shallows, one of which heaps will sometimes overfill a cart,—these heaps the huge nests of small fishes; the birds which frequent the stream, heron, duck, sheldrake, loon, osprey; the snake, muskrat, otter, woodchuck, and fox, on the banks; the turtle, frog, hyla, and cricket, which make the banks vocal,—were all known to him, and, as it were, townsmen and fellow-creatures; so that he felt an absurdity or violence in any narrative of one of these by itself apart, and still more of its dimensions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... done an almighty lot of good. And I hain't sayin' nothin' ag'in' Alvy Hopkins nor his munificence. But I do know there's a sight of little bills on that desk that won't be passed if we don't set to-morrow night—little bills that are big bills for us farmers. That thar woodchuck bill, for one." (Laughter.) "My constituents want I should have that bill passed. We don't need a quorum for them bills, but we need time. Naow, Mr. Speaker, I say let all them that wants to go and see 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' go and see it, but let a few of us fellers that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Till they found all further passage Shut against them, barred securely By the trunks of trees uprooted, Lying lengthwise, lying crosswise, And forbidding further passage. "We must go back," said the old man, "O'er these logs we cannot clamber; Not a woodchuck could get through them, Not a squirrel clamber o'er them!" And straightway his pipe he lighted, And sat down to smoke and ponder. But before his pipe was finished, Lo! the path was cleared before him; All the trunks had Kwasind ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... its place, all natural forces seem to sympathize with it, and help it to fulfil its destiny. Once make a well-defined track through a wood, and presently the overflowing brooks seek it for a channel, the obstructed winds draw through it, the fox and woodchuck travel by it, the catbird and robin build near it, the bee and swallow make a high-road of its convenient thoroughfare. In winter the first snows mark it with a white line; as you wander through you hear the blue-jay's cry, and see the hurrying ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... anarchists with deadly bombs in their blouses, where they were accustomed to carry black bread to sustain life, and with the menace of Japan in the far east and an outraged people at home, Russia is in a bad way, and if I was the czar or a grand duke, I would find a woodchuck hole and arrange with the ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... bad, considering you were in something of a hurry," said Uncle Andy approvingly. "That's really a very good description of a woodchuck. No one could possibly mistake it for a ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... could not tell, but he roused with a start, and sat bolt upright, glancing around him impatiently. Directly over his head, soaring high over the trees, was one of the great birds, evidently in search of prey: perhaps an unwary rabbit, squirrel, or fat woodchuck, ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... made itself heard in the cabin. From behind the cabin arose a sonorous cry of hong-ka, honk-a-honk, and the snaky black head of a big Canada goose appeared inquiringly around the corner. On one end of the hewn log which served as doorstep a preternaturally large and fat woodchuck sat bolt upright and stared to see who was coming. A red fox, which had been curled up asleep under MacPhairrson's one rose bush, awoke, and superciliously withdrew to the other side of the island, out of sight, disapproving of ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... beaver is a wonder of neatness and comfort, much preferable to the wigwam of his Indian hunter. The muskrat knows how thick and high to build the dome of his waterside cottage, in order to protect himself against the frost of the coming winter and the floods of the following spring. The woodchuck's house has two or three doors; and the squirrel's dwelling is provided with a good bed and a convenient storehouse for nuts and acorns. The sportive otters have a toboggan slide in front of their residence; and the moose in winter make a "yard," where they can take exercise comfortably ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... the holes would meet in the middle; but the holes never met. When he had bored all the way through from one side, he had either broken the gimlet or the hole had come slantingways and the gimlet had come out, like a woodchuck in his burrow, where it had ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... for the red-orange surroundings, and a far louder and longer cry for signalling across the peaks and canyons, and so became the bigger, handsomer, more important creature we call the Mountain Whistler, Yellow Marmot or Orange Woodchuck. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... caged woodchuck, launched into a tirade about silly Sunday-school notions, and, by a transition which I did not grasp, passed to a review of the general subject of woman's suffrage. I gathered that he is not in favor of the movement. I let him argue himself quiet, then I handed him a check ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... atom there is; there is no church, but only the gnats rushing about. We know of nothing so empty and hollow, so near a vacuum, as matter in this conception of it. Indeed, in the new physics, matter is only a hole in the ether. Hence the newspaper joke about the bank sliding down and leaving the woodchuck-hole sticking out, looks like pretty good physics. The electrons give matter its inertia, and give it the force we call cohesion, give it its toughness, its strength, and all its other properties. They make water wet, and the ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... The woodchuck told it all about. "I'm going to build a dwelling Six stories high, up to the sky!" He never ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... for Thoreau's influence over the wild creatures, Emerson voiced this superstition when he said, "Snakes coiled round his leg, the fishes swam into his hand, and he took them from the water; he pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail, and took the foxes under his protection from the hunters." Of course Thoreau could do nothing with the wild creatures that you or I could not do under the same conditions. A snake will coil around any man's leg if he steps on its ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... agree with you," Billy Woodchuck said. "I think he was named Sandy on account of his yellowish, reddish, ...
— The Tale of Sandy Chipmunk • Arthur Scott Bailey
... barbarous expedition of juvenile interest on hand; the unearthing of a woodchuck, or it might have been a groundhog, in a back field; but Allis would not become a party to the destruction of animal life for the sport of the thing. She had a much better programme mapped out for Mortimer. Some way she felt that if he could see the thoroughbred horses in their ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser |
