Eva v. Rabies

I remembered this story because once again Pete and I are working on fixing up the college rental.

This is my account from two years- so let us just flash back to 2008…..

I'm almost done tearing out the carpet upstairs and am taking one of my final trips to the dumpster that is across the parking lot for the disposal. Since it is summer the complex is empty except for maybe one or two random cars. I’m almost at the dumpster... when I hear this rusting and movement come from behind it. Since I was caught off guard- I scream!

Oh phew, it's just a groundhog.

Except the groundhog stand still and just stares at me. He doesn't run away. He just keeps staring. I’m no forest ranger but even I know that is highly unusual.

Then the groundhog charges right at me! I scream (again), throw the carpet down onto the ground and run all the way back across the parking lot feeling like a tool. I'm being chased by a groundhog- something that is 15lbs is chasing me screaming across a empty parking lot.

The groundhog stops chasing me long enough to wrestle with the dropped carpet. He’s straight up attacking the carpet, tossing it up in the air and all that jazz. It's pretty funny so I call Pete down to check him out. We’re standing outside watching, remarking to each other how nuts this looks, when the little demon stops with carpet turns and starts to stare at us. He stares. He stares. He runs right at us! Halfway accross the parking lot, he stops to stare at us some more. We're still laughing because this is really weird.

Then the shit head charges right at us! It was like dumb and dumber with the two of us trying to get through the door and inside at the same time. We seriously slammed the door right in his face!

He starts to freak out and scratches at the door! Even with the door securely closed and the bolt lock thrown the door is moving. For about five minutes he's pacing up and down in front of our door scratching and attacking trying to get in.

After it quiets down Pete sticks his out the window downstairs to see if he's still out there, when a pair of giant teeth come right up from nowhere trying to eat Pete’s face. My reflexes have never worked faster and I swear I almost slammed the window down on Pete's head.

At this point we’re being kept hostage by a groundhog. We call the cops to get animal control out, ‘cause something is wrong with this guy and eventually we do want to leave.

It takes the cop about five minutes to get there. In the mean time the groundhog has tried to climb UP the front porch to get to us ( we watched from the top floor window), attempted to climb a bush to get to us and has started digging a hole on the side of the house. The thing is surprisingly determined to get at us inside the house.

The cop needs to have a visual on the animal before animal control will come out. You could tell the cop thought this was a total BS call when he got there. We told him- from the upstairs window-, this isn’t a joke and that the groundhog was out there and he is dangerousThe cop believed us when he got charged a few times! Thank goodness for his tall cop boots and night stick… The cop was even taking video on his cell as prove that this was really a legit call!

Eventually animal control came and she got him. He made a break for freedom and came very close to almost escaping into the woods. Once he was locked away we could leave the house again. On the scene the animal control officer told us that it was likely he was “dehydrated” and that was the reason behind the erratic behavior. Um, I’ve been dehydrated before and I’m pretty sure I’ve never tried to eat someone’s face off because of it.

Three days later animal control calls to make sure we didn’t have any contact with the groundhog.

The groundhog (duh) had rabies.


Moral of the story- I no longer think groundhogs are cute and now have a dumpster complex.

The end.