We’re in rural, wooded NYS and have a resident groundhog. He lives under the PODS storage container that’s been sitting on our lawn for the past year. We bought this place a year ago and have been gut-renovating it. Well, in the next few months—probably around Thanksgiving or a bit before—we’ll finally have the interior renovated enough to move the rest of our things out of the POD and into the house. Then the POD will be taken away.
Now, unlike apparently 99% of internet users, I am not trying to murder this groundhog or destroy its burrow. (A web search on how to build a groundhog burrow resulted in nothing but posts about how to eradicate the creatures.) We love to see him come out and browse on our lawn. He’s entertaining and harmless. SO—we don’t want to make him suddenly homeless this fall, especially as hibernation season is coming on.
The POD makes a pretty ideal burrow cover for a groundhog. It has four small entrances at the base (see pic here, for example) that I believe all connect, giving him the alternate escape routes he needs. So when it goes away, I’d like to have something suitable prepared nearby that he can quickly move to if he ends up being too exposed. (It’s also entirely possible he’ll already be hibernating at that point, and moving the POD will only expose a small surface hole into the bigger burrow; he might not even wake up when the things is moved away. That would be the best-case scenario.)
Our yard drops off into the woods just beyond the POD. So there is a nice bank that he could dig into, and something I could potentially put a lean-to structure over (like a sheet of plywood?) to help him get started on his tunnels.
What do you all think? What’s my best route forward to saving this groundhog from homelessness?
I’d worry more about how to convince him to move out of the POD now. If he goes now, he’ll have time to make his own burrow before the ground freezes. If you try and move him out in November, it might not go so well.
I’m fairly sure you will find that he has burrowed down quite a bit – presumably he will have sensed that the steel container doesn’t provide much heat insulation. Although, covering the spot with some straw and a few wooden pallets after the container is removed sure wouldn’t harm him!
You could try to get hold of a camera with fiber optics – the kind used by plumbers and chimney sweepers – to find out what it looks like under the container before you have it moved.
Could you not just fabricate some structure out of wood that simulates the base of the POD? Al it would have to do is simulate the same coverage area and have openings to the ground below like the pod? It could even be sort of deck like and you could put some chairs and plants on top of it to help it blend in better to the landscape than the Pod.
Don’t worry. He’s been watching your progress and has already begun tunneling a new, deluxe home underneath your main house. He’ll be ready to move when you are.
Build a brush pile where the POD used to be. Leave gaps by the tunnel openings. Wear gloves so the brush doesn’t smell like humans. Next year, come March or April, move the brush pile to the edge of the woods by the bank and leave a trail of cantaloupe chunks leading from the old POD-tunnels to the brush pile. Once you’ve seen him (or her?) move into new digs (pun intended) by the edge of the woods, pour gravel down the old tunnels … one per day, to let any pups (who knows!) evacuate.
Buy 3 or 4 traps, both capture and kill types, put out rodent poison, try to alternately flood his tunnels and smoke bomb them. Doing the above will guarantee he lives a long and comfortable life.
A couple of homes ago, we had no shortage of whistlepigs. Never perceived any need to assist them in getting comfortable. In fact, I could imagine that if I TRIED to encourage them to set up house in one particular place, that would guarantee that they would dig anyplace else!
Groundhogs are tough. And AMAZING diggers. Don’t worry about it.
Groundhogs are prey animals. They use their burrows to hide from predators. Thus, what they are looking for in a home is bunker-like qualities – hard to dig into from above. Suggest something heavy and solid like some pallets with weights on them. At least this is what my dogs would not want a groundhog to have. Also second the idea of a brush pile. You’ll get even more happy wildlife with a brush pile.
I say don’t worry about it one bit. The groundhog, as noted, is in a hole under the POD. Remove that and it’s still in a hole. All the groundhog dwellings I’ve seen are just that. Holes. If it isn’t deep enough it will excavate a bit more. No problem.
We live on a short, dead-end road with only one other house on it, surrounded by woods. So we see a fair bit of wildlife. Last summer/fall, we saw a couple of groundhogs on the road—one enormous barrel of a hog, who we named Beef. Later, we saw a slightly smaller one, who we called Cake, resulting in the Brangelina-like portmanteau of Beefcake for the couple. This spring, when our current (then rather small) resident appeared by the POD, we called him Babycakes (as the presumed offspring of Beef and Cake).
All the assumptions are probably incorrect. Mr. Cake may very well be female, and may not be the offspring of the previous two hogs we saw. But the story passes the time.