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Billy was a horny groundhog. His cousin Phil (no relation to the famous groundhog of Punxsutawney) knew that when he invited Billy to come for a visit in New Orleans, but family was family and Phil’s mother raised the groundhog to have good solid values. Besides, Phil knew Billy would love the carnival atmosphere of Mardis Gras, and wanted to share in the good times with his cousin.

It was late January when Billy got the invitation. Usually a disruption during hibernation months would send his back up and his claws out, but it was unusually warm this year, and sleep eluded him. A two week trip down to Louisiana might be just the thing Billy needed to scratch this itch.

Upon arrival, Billy was pleased to find a whole colony of groundhogs milling about under the field where Phil had his burrow. There were plenty of fine-looking female groundhogs to occupy his time for the duration of his stay.

Billy settled in quickly into Cousin Phil’s burrow. It was a nice hole in the ground, not too large, but comfortable enough for the two of them. “At any rate,” Billy said to Phil his first evening there as he tried to get comfortable on the sofa (yes, a sofa in a burrow, go with it, the groundhogs are talking too), “I don’t plan to spend too much time here, if you know what I’m saying.”

Phil nodded politely. He didn’t really know what Billy was saying.

The next day, Phil introduced Billy around the colony. Billy made a mental list of the females he intended to pursue: Molly, Jillian, Wendy, Tina B. and Tina Z., yes, a fine assortment indeed! Billy thought impure thoughts all day long and was happy to do so. Phil was none the wiser as his cousin scoped out his friends and neighbors like items on a grassy smorgasbord.

That night, Billy did not come back to the burrow. Phil fretted and worried, worried and fretted, because often when groundhogs did not return home it meant that one of the human monstrosities had gotten a hold of him. Phil had seen it happen before, and his mother would not have been happy if she would have known he had invited his cousin down to Louisiana only to be smashed flat. His own sweet mother had gone that way herself, and Phil did not think it a pleasant way to end one’s time in the burrow.

Fortunately, the following morning, Billy came stumbling back into the burrow, bleary-eyed but alive. “Oh, goodness gracious me,” Phil cried, “I was so worried about you! I positively fretted for hours!”

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Billy said, sinking into the sofa.

“Well?” Phil pried.

“Well what?”

“Aren’t you going to tell me where you were?” Phil exclaimed.

Billy stretched his cute little paws over his cute little head, yawned a cute little yawn and, smacking his lips together, said, “Giving the Tinas a little of the old Billy business.”

“Incredible,” Phil whispered in awe.

“They were indeed, cousin, they were indeed.”

Within moments, Billy was asleep.

Sandra the groundhog lived three burrows over from Phil. When Billy was making his rounds of the lady groundhogs, experiencing all the fields outside New Orleans had to offer, Sandra had been laid up (ironically enough) with a cold.

Two hours before the pegs came, she finally made it to the surface again after a week of sniffling and sneezing.

It was on that day that Billy the Groundhog, for the first time in his life, found himself completely and utterly love struck. Oh sure, he had been with other beautiful lady groundhogs, hundreds in fact, but he had never in all his life seen one as beautiful as Sandra. Where had this creature been all this time? He knew at once that Sandra was unlike any other groundhog he had ever seen, and he would have her.

“Yeah, yeah, Phil, preparations for the parade here. Got to vacate for a little while. Yeah, I get it,” Billy said, licking his paw and slicking back the tuft of white hair on the top of his head that drove the lady groundhogs crazy.

“You’re not listening to a word I’m saying,” Phil said.

“Yeah, got it,” Billy said. He cocked his head to the side and blinked his seductive groundhog eyes at the cutie across the field.

With his best swagger in tow, Billy made his way over to the gorgeous groundhog.

“Yo, Baby,” Billy chirped. “I’m Billy, what’s going down?” A fail-proof line for a groundhog.

Sandra looked Billy up and down. Maybe it was her cold messing with her head, maybe she was immune to Billy’s prowess, maybe she just wasn’t in the mood, but this strange groundhog caught her at the wrong time. She did not need this right now.

“What’s your name, Grass Clump,” Billy said.

“Sandra,” she answered. “I have something to. . .”

“No, no,” he said, holding a paw to her mouth, “say nothing. One such as you need not speak. Everything you want to say,” he said, lowering his eyes to half-gaze (his signature move), “is in your eyes.”

This was too much. With a shrug of a shoulder and careless swipe of the air with a delicate paw, Sandra turned away and crawled back into her hole.

Indeed, she didn’t have any more to say to him.

Billy stared after her. He was unaccustomed to being rejected and was unsure how to react.

Glancing around to see if anyone had watched (Phil was already long gone), he shrugged it off. No matter, tomorrow would be another day, and Billy was not one who accepted failure lying down. He crawled back into Phil’s hole and spread out on the sofa. The one thing he loved more than the lady-groundhogs was a good nap. He passed out quickly, and dreamed of Sandra.

When he awoke an hour later, dreams of a beautiful lady groundhog lingered in his mind. That groundhog who had turned that sly shoulder to him, the one with the delicate paws, sent feelings through Billy he had never experienced before. She wouldn’t be just any conquest for him: no, this was it, the real deal. He knew that he must have her. With a deep sigh, he stretched his paws over his head, readying himself to go after what he was now sure was his one true love.

A quick run through of his white tuft with a comb and he was ready to go.

A moment later, Billy was rocked by a rumbling that shook him to the core. At first he thought something had gone off, but even in his youngest days he had never been this premature. No, this was something bigger, and it was coming from above.

Billy made for the entrance to the burrow, prepared to scurry to the surface, when a gigantic wooden stake suddenly thrust its way into the mouth of the tunnel, completely blocking off the exit.

He tried scampering to the rear of the burrow, but another stake came crashing down blocking off that tunnel. He was trapped.

Panic filled Billy then, and he started to hyperventilate. What if he never got out of here? Had some cosmic punishment been induced because of his philandering ways? He was a groundhog, after all, and he had needs!

Billy tried to calm himself down. He sat on the sofa and put his head between his paws. He concentrated on his breathing, and soon was able to slow his heart down.

All right, Billy, how do you get out of here?

Well, what do groundhogs do, Billy?

They dig, of course!

Billy could have smacked himself, but he was afraid to mess his tuft.

He went to the wall opposite the sofa, took down the drawing of his Aunt Galdys that Phil must have done, and licked his paws. He began scratching at the wall, but soon found that it was hopeless – there was solid rock behind the wall.

The same proved true on the wall behind the sofa – was Phil really so stupid he had dug his burrow between two sheets of rock? Of all the idiotic things to do!

It looked like he was trapped. Trapped until. . .

Of course! Billy suddenly remembered Phil had told him something was happening: that there was some kind of party going on for the day above, and the large creatures which the metal boxes swallowed and spat out all day by his home were going to use the field.

Why hadn’t Phil warned him to get out!

Billy was stuck, and so he sat back down on the sofa. He would fall asleep (he was very good at that) and when he woke up, maybe the wooden stakes would be gone.

As he lay stretched on the sofa, his thoughts kept turning to Sandra. He had never seen a groundhog that possessed such poise, such grace, such. . .teeth. Billy couldn’t clear his mind of her, and sleep, for one of the first times in his life, eluded him.

Well, fine, then, he wouldn’t sleep. But what to do while he waited for the removal of the stakes? He tore through Phil’s sorry excuse for a burrow. Phil had the sofa, the drawings of his mother, and some odds and ends of groundhog life. There was a small bit of grass stored away in a drawer that he could nibble on if he got desperate.

It was going to be a long day.

Three hours in, and the ground was shaking again. Strange sounds were thrumming through the burrow, and Billy didn’t like it one bit. He had already counted all the lines on the drawings of Aunt Gladys (twenty three – Phil was a terrible artist), counted the blades of grass (oddly enough, twenty three, though admittedly that was after he’d eaten four), and tried gnawing through the wooden stakes (all that did was result in hurt teeth).

Billy spent quite a bit of time trying to enjoy himself in the way he did when there were no female groundhogs around, but images of Sandra kept floating to the front of his vision and he found that he was – inept. There was something about this Sandra that prevented him from being a full groundhog, and he simply couldn’t bring himself to face the truth.

He knew what it was. Indeed, he’d heard about it his whole life. His sister Lilly, back in North Carolina, always told him that one day he’d find the right lady-groundhog and all his old, dirty, disgusting ways would be washed away in a single purifying sweep. “Love does that, you know,” Lilly would say, “your disgusting habits, your dirty thoughts, your smarmy, slick attitude will all be washed away and you’ll be the full groundhog you were born to be.”

Billy sighed, he was hooked. Images of Sandra swam through his mind, and he couldn’t get them out.

Before long, he was drawing with his claw on the ground. He didn’t even mind the chafing feeling of scratching his claw against the rock beneath the hard packed ground (Phil was an idiot).

A couple of hours later, the images of Sandra were talking to Billy. They were saying sweet nothings to him, and he liked that just fine. He even liked the fact that there were three of them, one talking into each ear, and one sitting on his lap, petting his fur.

Billy wasn’t sure which was more disturbing – that his fantasies usually involved petting a whole lot more than fur, or the fact that there were only three Sandras when everyone knew there should be twenty three.

No, that wasn’t right.

Billy shook his head and began to gnaw at the wooden stakes. Chewing the stakes was somehow comforting to Billy, and it erased the images of Sandra, at least for the time being.

The sounds from above had trailed off into the distance, but a rhythmic thumping continued through the burrow.

The Sandras swayed seductively before Billy, but did little more than that. He tried closing his eyes; he tried scratching through rock; he tried ramming his groundhog head into the stakes to break them down – nothing could stop the swaying.

He finally settled into the sofa to watch the show, waving his little arms before him as though directing the Sandras where to go.

The noise from above returned with great fanfare: the ground shook heavily and the noise was unlike any Billy had heard before.

The Sandras clung to Billy’s fur, terrified. It was the happiest he had been all day.

Then, with another great rumble, the stake in front of the rear tunnel lifted from the ground. Moments later, the other stake lifted.

He was free!

The Sandras slowly coalesced into one image that waved happily to him as it drifted back into the line drawings on the ground. Billy shook his head and gnashed his teeth.

The noise from above clattered and clunked and then subsided.

With the tunnel open, Billy started to climb toward the open ground.

A new feeling filled Billy. He no longer felt beholden to his old urges. He didn’t intend to chase every tail he could find. He only wanted Sandra, and he wouldn’t rest until he made her his mate. His sister was right: for the first time in his life he felt like he could truly be the groundhog he was meant to be!

He emerged from the tunnel and felt the morning air sweep across his face, clean and fresh.

He had survived the burrow. Billy was ready to start a brand new day.

END

Copyright 2009 Author

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