There was high drama in my back yard Friday morning as I awoke to the sound of my back yard neighbor saying, 'Git' 'Go on.' 'Get out of here.' I immediately went out (in my pajamas even) to see what was going on. The neighbor behind me was out by his shed kicking his trash can and when I looked more closely there was one of the baby woodchucks stuck under the chain link fence that separates our two yards. With all this going on it was obvious he WANTED to get out of there, but couldn't. I thought at first that he just didn't have enough room to move and tried to dig a bigger hole under the fence. But soon it was clear that his head was actually stuck in the chain link! I didn't have any wire cutters or bolt cutters; other neighbors weren't home and my next door neighbor also didn't have anything that could cut the chain link. I finally went to the mobile home park office to see if the owner had anything. She found a small pair of wire cutters, but they weren't going to do the job. I needed some heavy duty cutters. She went to her shed and let me look around and I finally saw what I needed. I brought them home and with the help of my next door neighbor we went to work. Not without many protests from the woodchuck though, and a concerned woodchuck mom that stuck her head out from under the shed to see what all the commotion was about. Even baby chuckies have some sharp teeth and a couple of times it grabbed onto the cutters and wouldn't let go. We literally had to stick the cutters between the chain link and the woodchuck's neck. We also had to make sure that there wasn't a woodchuck walking around with part of a chain link fence still around its neck. A few strategic snips and the chuckie was free.
I was too busy being concerned to get a picture of the woodchuck actually stuck under the fence, so I guess I'm not a very good documentarian. But in this picture you can see where we had to cut away the fence to free my little chuckie.
I have no idea how long he'd been stuck there. Hopefully only a few hours. As soon as it was free it made a mad dash for the hole under my shed as fast as its little legs could go.
I'm hoping the stress of the experience didn't have any ill effects. A tough lesson for a baby chuckie.
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