How much wood can a woodchuck chuck?

I work in an area nicknamed named “the fishbowl.” Our room of cubicles is encased by almost floor to ceiling windows looking into a hallway, which has more windows extending to the outside. So anyone wandering the hallways can look in at us, walking around, darting into cubes, and staring back out at them, wondering when we’ll see freedom.

Today I was standing staring avidly out one of the windows. My co-workers passed me by and asked what I’m doing lurking outside my cube. To which I replied, “There’s an animal out there, and I can’t figure out what it is. I think it might be a beaver, but don’t beavers live near water?” The furry brown animal was sitting in a huge lawn of grass. Then she looked out too, and she noted, “It looks like a rabbit, except for the tail.” I agreed, “It doesn’t have the ears for a rabbit too.” She guessed, “I think it’s a squirrel.” “That’s a pretty huge squirrel,” I repsonded. Can they get that big, I wondered, thinking of some of the French river rats I had seen, which were admittedly the size of a beaver. Then finally some wandering business man called out “It’s a woodchuck” as he passed by. I was amazed, “Wow, a woodchuck, I’ve never seen one before. Is that what one looks like?” We stared at it for a while. Then my co-worker spoke, “I’ve never seen a woodchuck either, you think he said chipmunk.” I was thinking it’s still too big for a chipmunk, and we needed to stop augmenting small rodents to justify the appearance of this new creature. So enough wasting our precious work time, I went back to my comp to check it out online. It was a woodchuck, aka groundhog. For those of you who have never seen one either, here’s a photo. Another one of my great NY experiences.