I had put some sprouted sweet potatoes on my porch. And they were so big and so sprouted, and the sprouts had gotten so big, I felt bad throwing them away. So I thought to myself, well, maybe I should bury them and then like see what happens. But I put them on the back porch temporarily, and I never got around to actually burying the sweet potatoes. And instead, a groundhog, which I’ve never seen a groundhog at this property, every day started to eat the sweet potato. So every day, there’d be another fraction of it, like, gone. He was quite cute. So I — instead of moving the sweet potato or doing anything, I would just watch him and I would just watch him eat the sweet potato.
And so, anyway, I joked with my coworkers like, “Is it bad to befriend a groundhog?” Like, “Is there any drawbacks to this?” And they were all like, “It’s a pest, kill it,” “No, don’t you dare, that’s terrible,” “They’re gonna ruin your foundation, they’re gonna destroy your yard,” blablabla. And I was like, “Well, he hasn’t yet. Like, he’s come back every day for the sweet potato, but there’s been no disturbance to my yard.” Well, I looked it up. And yeah, groundhogs will eat the larvae of hornets. So, my groundhog that I befriended, he ate up the nest of the hornet that stung my ankle! So, now, I do need to go back through and completely eradicate the remaining hornets before they rebuild, but besides that, I have not seen any other holes or damage that this groundhog has caused.
So I do think this is a superhero groundhog who has come to my rescue, because honest to goodness, I would’ve the next day or a couple days later mowed again, would’ve been attacked by hornets again because I — it didn’t even register in my brain that hornets can live in the ground. It just didn’t occur to me. Yeah, I wouldn’t have ever, I wouldn’t have looked. I would’ve been mowing my lawn again and I would’ve gotten attacked again. Because obviously I would’ve picked up right where I left off and I would be like, “Wow, this is the worst. I guess I’m called to not mow my lawn anymore.” That is not the case. So now this groundhog has revealed truth to me. So, there’s that.