His woodchuck work includes discovering a nonlethal way to keep the animals from being a real problem for fruit growers. I grew to admire them. At least when they stick to their natural habitats. If that seems like a lukewarm endorsement, the truth is that the woodchuck, or groundhog as it is also known, may be North America's least-loved native mammal. It waddles across most of the eastern United States and southern Canada.
Farmers consider it a nuisance.
Exurbanites who build their dream houses in woodchuck land call the exterminator when the animals tunnel under the carport. The striped skunk gets more respect, especially from motorists who, judging from the carnage along rural routes, rarely brake for woodchucks licking salt or munching newly mowed grass on the roadside. And Purdue University, though not Swihart himself, provides Internet surfers with three pages of tips for eliminating the rodents. Even on Groundhog Day, its annual moment in the limelight, the dumpy woodchuck is mainly the butt of bad jokes by television weatherpersons, or silly articles written by newbie journalists who get the assignments no one else wants. Last year, a woodchuck known as Wiarton Willie, Ontario's answer to Pennsylvania's Punxsutawney Phil, was in the headlines later than usual because of a death threat.