Robin’s Guide to Finding the Best Ground Hog
As a parent with smallish children, I’m always looking for ways to entertain them that don’t involve huge outlays of cash or substances that will stain the carpet. Not so easy. Well, yesterday–being a snow day–required me to work for it! As I said, I’m not crafty, but that doesn’t mean I’m not creative. Also, I’ve long since learned that everyone in my household is better off if we simply just do whatever my daughter tells us to. 
She asks a lot of questions. “What does ‘usual’ mean? What does ’popular’ mean?” Eh. Stuff that generally requires me to dig deep in to the recesses of my cerebral cortex and come up with a five-year-old friendly answer. Luckily, lots of the time, she just wants to see pictures of stuff. Sooo…long story short, she likes to “youtube.” (Yes, it’s now a verb in our household.)
We’ll sit in front of my laptop, fire up youtube and she’ll tell me what she wants to see. If I let her, she’d sit and do this w/ me for an hour or more. She’ll ask for things like hamsters running in a wheel, baby foals taking their first steps, jumping frogs (my son’s go-to request), baby elephants, really cute puppies. A caveat: you MUST closely supervise what pulls up when running any search on youtube with your five year old. A surprising number of people will upload videos tagged as “really cute puppies” that… in fact…have disturbingly nothing to do with puppies! 
Well, today it was all about the Groundhogs in honor of Groundhog’s Day. She asked me to find her a groundhog looking at its shadow. Lo and behold, look here. These little guys are so cute, I want ‘em to get in mah belly!!
Then we found this one. We both thought it was a bit disturbing and yet strangely compelling (kind of like driving by a car wreck….no worries though, it’s safe to click, this is a family blog!) After this one, frankly, I hope never to have to seek medical treatment in Pennsylvania.
Go G-Hog! Go G-Hog!
Oh my goodness, I’d forgotten it’s ground hog’s day! Most likely the movie will be played on USA or TNT–which I’ve never watched it past the 1st 1/2 hour.
Liked the 1st video-cute..I agree with you on the 2nd, it was almost like MC Hammer was trying to make a come back HA
Comment by Cheryl Engfer — February 2, 2008 @ 1:53 am
My friend Pete thinks Groundhog Day should be a federal holiday. It is his favorite, aside from Christmas and Halloween. He is quick to point out that it is one word–ground hog as 2 words is more like sausage–so of course, I always use the 2 word variation just to be mean.
Robin, if your daughter would like a real groundhog family for her very own, we have one living under the deck off our master bedroom. kind of spooky the first time I saw one of them peering in. Maybe your hubby would like to hunt some new game???
Comment by phyllis — February 2, 2008 @ 11:02 am
Yes well, groundhog = rodent, unfortunately ;0
Comment by Robin Dec — February 2, 2008 @ 11:41 am
rodents=varmints. I’d like to grind these hogs! They ARE really cute, like the video, early in the season when they are babies. Not so much by the end of the summer, when they are the size of a subcompact (and at which point they aren’t particularly docile–although they will be startled away pretty easily). I keep waiting to see a gang war between them and the raccoons that live in our drain pipe, but not so far. I’m getting visions of Watership Down now (ok, that was rabbits, which are cute, but…)
I have found a way to keep the GH’s underground (a human related compound they aren’t fond of), but I’m not hanging that one out in print.
Comment by phyllis — February 2, 2008 @ 5:58 pm
Oh let’s see here … (rifles through a few suspect books) … the Ojibwa in the Detroit area used to make a Groundhog Stew. And since groundhog is a rodent, it’s probably cook up just like muskrat does … I have a couple good mustards here …
Any takers for Parboiled Puxatawney Phil?
Comment by Luna Pier Cook — February 3, 2008 @ 9:55 pm
Mmmmm, sounds delicious. Ground Hog Helper?
Comment by Robin Dec — February 3, 2008 @ 10:21 pm