Connecticut western news., 1910-01-20
"REBECCA CHUCKW0OD"
Baby Woodchuck, Raised on Bottle,
 in Canaan, is Now Alternating,

Baby Woodchuck, Raised on Bottle,
 in Canaan, is Now Alternating,
 The following account, written by Mrs. B. A. Hitchcock, of Canaan, was published in a recent number of the New England Homestead:
 Becky Chuck. for so we called her for short, was caught while quite young and unweaned from Mother Woodchuck. For a month or SIX weeks Becky lived Tn a barrel and was fed several times a day from bottle with nipple, just as ba- bies are fed. She thrived on cows milk. the bottle and nipple being kept as clean and wholesome as for baby. It was great fun to watch her eat, or suck from the bottle She would be taken up Sy the back of the neck, held in my arms, and would then clasp the neck of the bottle with her little black paws and work them exactly as kitten does at the maternal fount.
 After while Becky refused the bottle, in short, weaned herself, and then came baked beans and oat neal. The barrel was no longer her home, but she had wide range under a piazza 82 feet long and ten feet wide. Beneath the side steps she made an entrance, and from there, all the summer, she would come at my call of Becky Chuck" for her meals. always took her up and carried her into the house to eat. Her smacks could be heard all over the room while she ate, which showed that she keenly enjoyed her fare. No one but myself could handle her; to everyone else she clashed her teeth ill threatening man ner.
 One day Miss Becky fell into the swill pail, and emerging therefrom she drag ged her greasy tail over our best carpets and rugs to hide under, or in, the piano player. The prints of her feet are still visible in spots here and there.
 Fatter and fatter grew Miss Chuck wood, and finally sine dropped from three meals day to two, then one, and then it was every other day. On September I2 she took her last meal of the season and under the porch we found the hol. where she will sleep away the rest of th' fall and winter. I had petted and taken so much care of her that am lonesome without her. She was a most interest ling and unique pet.
 Ono thing I should like to know aboI the woodchuck; this one never iranl water, to our knowledge. It was giY, | to her, but she would never toacn if There was no water near by wAero sl ( could drink, and she never wander ee over three feet from the shelter of t. { porch. I would like to know if to gC without water is possible for any living creature.
 Well, my big, fat, quaint Becky il hibernating. A strange thing is thtt long sleep, so like death. I go down into the cellar and out in the hatchway where 1 can see the entrance to her safe, snug chamber, and somehow have feeling | 4IhO O habChO1 1b h bOl11O- W III oA' come forth in the spring and remembe me and her name, and will she be glat of her baked beans and oatmeal? fee sure she will remember, and take up heI queer little ways of life just as she lief them. She will duck down her forepaws so like little black hands, WI en scratcl her fat cheeks, and will take my finger in her mouth and give it tiny little nil (she never bit mel, and I know in hel little woodchucky brain she will be as glad to see me as 1 shall be to see her.
 Now while great winds and storms of winter beat on land and sea, my quaint ground-hog lady will sleep and sleep with scarce pulse-beat in the dark red heart of her, till the strange, subtle stirring of the spring resurrection begin to touch the earth, and then-and then Well, the baked beans, not the fatted calf, will be ready when Miss Chuck wook comes forth, lean and hungry. tc smell the weather and the faint, far-of1 odors of green things that will be grow. ing. shall write and tell about her when she comes back again, for she is not dead but hibernating.