My final exam had not gone well relative to the amount of time I spent studying for it. Sometimes life is just that way; you have your aspirations in one hand and your shit in the other. Floundering in the void between the two, I sat on a bench in front of Hochstetter Hall in my two-piece button-up pajamas with a flask of bourbon. It was the middle of the day and I had an English exam that I was preparing to go into drunk, or at the very least reeking of bourbon so badly that somebody near me might feel repulsed.

The high winds tearing across campus blew my hair back and, as I nipped from my flask, left me feeling somehow vindicated. I was so burned out. Killing my flask, I turned to start walking back towards Capen when I saw a groundhog about 25 feet away. He was looking at me and it just kind of struck me, so I stopped walking and just stood regarding him. Eventually, I felt some of my tension slowly diffuse away. A lot of people walked by as the groundhog and I stared at each other for five solid minutes. That’s a lot of time to stare at a groundhog. I could have had a drink with him. Instead, I blew out a sigh and actually told him, “All right buddy, you’re okay by me,” and started walking again, being careful to give the guy a wide berth. But as soon as I started moving, the little son-of-a-bitch scampered into his hole, like I was threatening him or something. My moment of serenity suddenly blown to hell in the wake of this, I walked over to his den underneath the cement stairs in pursuit of resolution.

I must have been five feet away from the mouth of the den when I bent at the waist and looked in.

I don’t know how to describe it, but at times, I’ve seen my dogs laying in their backs on the floor, paws in the air, shaking their asses back and forth against the ground and looking elated. This was what the son-of-a-bitch groundhog was doing. He was on his back, just feet from me, pawing the air above him and writhing back and forth. It felt like I was watching something weird and rare.

This is how I would liken it: They saved Rasputin’s big preserved penis in a jar of formaldehyde, apparently because it helped to explain his strange allure over women. Whatever. Though I never have seen it, I would liken seeing the jar and its contents to peeping in on the woodhog. Somewhat indecent and revolting, not altogether unimpressive, and so strange.

I was drunk. Not a lot, but enough that I stared into the den of a wood chuck for another ten minutes to watch him roll around. Then, without any real transition, the groundhog all of a sudden flipped over onto his feet and looked at me. He ambled forward slowly until my face and his face were maybe two and a half feet apart. This may not seem that close, but I could have swatted him and he could have taken a chunk out of my face. I feel confident in this because, up close, those sons of bitches look dirty and savage—I guess like one might think a wild beast should look like.

Anyway, he took another couple of steps closer and I wasn’t sure if I should be shitting my pants in fear of rabies shots or feeling like the beastmaster. He was so fucking ugly up close— definitely not the cute little rodent I had mistaken him to be. Even so, being a few drinks deep, I’m pretty sure that I would have stayed there even if he came right up and touched me. But, after 25 minutes of messing around with the groundhog in the middle of campus, and having people walking by thinking I was fucking crazy (I also had my pajama set on in the afternoon), I realized the son-of-a-bitch didn’t even know that I was standing right in front of him… because he didn’t have a fucking eyeball!

He’d been staring me down with this sweltering black scar stretching all across his eye socket. It looked like dark, furrowed leather, as if someone had transplanted a tiny gorilla’s vagina in place of his eye. It was so ridiculous that I must have physically reacted in a way that was visible to him, because just after I realized he was one-eyed he snapped his head to the other side and took stock of me with his sole, menacing eye before he ran like hell into his den and out of sight. Maybe because he was ashamed.

It’s all true, and it happened to me. Me, baby! And if there were any more booze on me at the time, I’d have had another drink. Instead, head reeling with the magnitude of these events, I ambled in and aced my exam. At night, lying in bed and waiting for sleep, I knew in my bones that he made it through another winter, that he’s still alive and waiting for you somewhere on North Campus. Keep an eye out for him.