WNC Nature Center's Nibbles Will Predict When North Carolina's Winter Will End

By Sarah Oram 

Ashevile, NC - Spend your Groundhog Day at the WNC Nature Center with Susan Reinhardt and find out what a single mom and a single groundhog have in common!

It’s Groundhog Day once again at the Western North Carolina Nature Center! Join Asheville Citizen Times columnist Susan Reinhardt and the Nature Center staff on Monday February 2, 2008 at 3:30 p.m. as we take a close view of our groundhog, Nibbles, one of the largest squirrels in the eastern U.S.! Our Nature Center naturalists and Carlton Burke, noted expert, will amaze you with the biology and ecology of these herbivorous creatures, along with Appalachian music and folklore about our local “whistle-pigs”.

Nibbles D. Groundhog (pre-named) was brought to the Nature Center two years ago by a local family who had brought her up by hand. In her first year of life, she became accustomed to free meals and carpet so release into the wild was out of the question. In addition, she did not have the skills to avoid predators or the sense to avoid humans. The WNC Nature Center was delighted to welcome her as one of its educational animals. 

Known also as woodchucks, or Marmota monax to lovers of Latin, groundhogs were initially scarce in the eastern United States when the first European settlers arrived. However, as forests were felled and meadows and fields increased in abundance, groundhogs flourished. Almost everyone has seen one along the roadside. Now that Nibbles has arrived at the Nature Center, she can be influential in her ability to illuminate the finer features of a species often seen at distance.  It is undeniably exciting to catch a glimpse of a woodchuck from a car at 60 mph or one running away from you, but the unique situation of this imprinted animal will allow many Nature Center visitors their first upclose educational experience with a groundhog.

To that educational end, here are some whistle-pig facts. Woodchucks are seasoned climbers and good swimmers but do not chuck wood.  Though like beavers, for which groundhogs are sometimes confused, woodchucks need to gnaw to keep their ever-growing front teeth from getting too long. When not gnawing, they are known to nibble.  Foraging mostly by morning and evening, they keep a healthy diet of fruits and vegetables, grass and leaves with the seldom addition of insect or snail flesh.  They can hold food with their front legs while standing upright to survey the scene.  This scoping is also done at the entrance to burrows, which can be extensive and include multiple escape routes, a latrine and flood control system, all of which are cleaned several times a week.  The nest can be 4.5 feet below the ground in these mostly single-occupancy dwellings.  This accomplished excavation provides homes for foxes, opossums, raccoons, rabbits and mice.  Groundhogs use burrows routinely including during approximately 3 months of hibernation when their body temperature drops by almost half and heart rate slows 85% to save energy.  Males emerge first around the beginning of February (in time for Groundhog Day we hope) and females come out about a month later, when members of each sex come together for a short period to mate.  The young provide food for foxes and hawks while adults help sustain larger predators.

So, come join us at the WNC Nature Center for your own personal Groundhog Day celebration and we will do our best to explain what a single mom and a single groundhog have in common and how much wood a woodchuck would chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood!

The Nature Center’s mission is to educate the public about the flora and fauna of Western North Carolina and foster an interest in the conservation of native plants and animals. The Nature Center serves 27 counties in western North Carolina and each year welcomes 100,000 visitors through its doors. For more information on this Groundhog Day celebration, please contact Keith Mastin, Education Curator, at 298-5600 ext. 308.