Hogging the Ground

I don't think that groundhogs really hog the ground. We had one hanging around here a summer or two ago, and all I ever saw him do was eat grass. I suppose, if we had a garden, he would have eaten that too, but we didn't, so we just let him be. For awhile it looked like he was sizing our woodpile up for a long winter's nap, but he must have gone someplace else because I never came across him while I was using up the wood that winter. Maybe they are called groundhogs because they get really fat before they go to ground for the winter. Hard to imagine them getting so fat eating just grass, so they must eat other things to pork up for the season. As far as chucking wood, I don't think they do that at all, so I have no idea why they might be called woodchucks. I'll have to look that up sometime.

You know who does hog the ground? People, that's who. A lot of animals are territorial, but humans have carried territoriality to the extreme. I suppose that started when they gave up their nomadic lifestyle and settled down in one place. I agree with Uncle Ken that roaming wild and free sounds like more fun than grubbing in the dirt with the boss man constantly hollering at you to grub faster. I think the reason people made the transition was that grubbing in the dirt was more productive. The trouble with being more productive is, that as soon as you start to stockpile anything, somebody tries to take it away from you. Then you have to start building walls and raising armies. Then you have to produce even more food to feed the wall builders and the soldiers. Somebody has to organize all that, which gives rise to another class of non-productive people that need to be fed, and so the pork barrel was invented.

Everyone knows that, the more you feed the wildlife, the more of them you will have bellying up to the trough. Nowadays, when people get a hankering to roam wild and free, there isn't enough land  to accommodate them all at once, so they have to take turns. They work indoors all year so they can afford to take a few weeks off to "See the U.S.A in their Chevrolet". Remember that one? Sounds like more fun than being born on a pile of shit, or even a pirate ship for that matter.