And then there were two... a second disappearance

     Things are not going well for the groundhog family. Their tunnels into the vegetable garden keep getting blocked up. What's more, they are disappearing, one at a time. The remaining groundhogs have not been able to figure out what is happening. Mrs. Gardener can be blamed for the bricks, but where are the missing youngsters? There is no evidence of attack by predator, wild or domestic. The only clue is a patch of flattened grass - which might have been the former resting spot of one of the cinder blocks blocking the garden passage. Now Mama Wood is in a state! No one is allowed in the vegetable garden. A dinner of grasses will have to suffice. That is a poor substitute for juicy vegetables and young garden shoots, and even the otherwise unmotivated Charles is beginning to show signs of impending action. But now, in addition to the mystery surrounding the garden, Charles also has to be on the alert for his mother's ire. But the stomach growls and the garden calls. There must be a way to circumvent the dangers, known and unknown, and enjoy the feast.

Excerpt From the Groundhog Story:

This was not a pleasant, comfortable position for Charles. He felt a tingling all over his skin. His mouth had gone dry. The rumbling in his middle had turned into a tightness. He did not want to go to the garden to look for his sister, but one look at his mother, her yellow teeth bared in his direction, took all the arguments out of his head and off his tongue. He gave Charlotte what he hoped was a withering look as he started down the garden passage. As he made his way through the dark tunnel, he tried to think of the possibilities that lay ahead. Maybe, he thought hopefully, Charlene had fallen asleep under a bush, and didn’t realize how late it was. That was unlikely. No groundhog ever fell asleep in a vegetable garden, especially not one as enthusiastic and industrious as Charlene. That left the more unpleasant scenarios. There hadn’t been a dog living on the farm in over a year, but you never could tell about the presence of dogs. A neighborhood dog might have come by that day and found Charlene without a fence between them. Or, worse yet, perhaps the Gardeners had adopted a new dog? Mama had heard of such things happening. It was an old tale passed from one generation to the next, and Charles recalled the stories of this possibility told to his sisters and him when they first emerged from their den as youngsters. Watch out for dogs, Charles told himself as he continued down the passage towards the garden. There was also Mr. Gardener and his gun. It had been a long time since Mr. Gardener had been near the garden. No one had ever seen Mrs. Gardener with a gun, though she came to the garden with regularity to plant, then weed, and finally harvest. She had always seemed fairly harmless though, at worst chasing Charles or his sisters away with her hoe or rake or spade. But humans were notoriously unpredictable. Charles had better be wary and on the watch for a human with a gun.

About a family of groundhogs - the first disappearance

I don't always work on the same project from one day to the next, and the holidays, which took me away from my computer, enforced a two-week stay in story development. However, upon returning to my groundhogs, and finding the hero sleeping in the sun while his sister was in the vegetable garden, I undertook to wake him up and give him a taste of what was in store for him and his family. He's such a lazy guy, and not particularly brave either. He has constantly to weigh safety and comfort against necessity - which sometimes takes the form of finding a way to avoid his mother's wrath. This is especially true when his elder sister comes up missing and the passage to the garden is blocked. Behind him, in the den, waits an angry, hungry mother with little patience for her ne'er-do-well son. Ahead lies the labor of digging a new garden door beyond which lie several unpleasant, even dangerous possibilities, but also the temptation of a richly growing vegetable garden, the solution to the gnawing emptiness in his belly. And what has happened to his sister? Will his mother accept him back without evidence of her whereabouts or information on her fate?

Across the Continent by Automobile

Between the years 2006 and 2008 I drove with my husband Joe and my dog Finlay across the Unites States five times. The occasion for these trips was a gradual move (still incomplete) from Ithaca, NY to Cardiff-by-the-Sea, CA. Each time we took a somewhat different route, drove through some states we hadn't yet been through, or through a different part of those states we had previously crossed, and saw different places, plants, and geological, historical and cultural sites. Sometimes we visited friends along the way. Once we camped. Already during our first trip across country, I knew I would want to use these travel experiences in a children's book on American geography, so, with this idea in mind, took many pictures along the way.

In November the story began to take shape. Using photographs from the first cross-country trip as a basis for the illustrations, and these illustrations as a guide for the text, the literary Finlay set off on his coast to coast adventure. Told from the viewpoint of my golden retriever, the story follows a travel route loosely equivalent to Route 70. As each state is traversed, Finlay tells tales of interesting things learned about that state. When I am not writing about groundhogs, I am telling Finlay's travel tales.

So far this story has taken Finlay from Central New York through Erie, Pennsylvania and across the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. Through a series of letters home to his feline sister Pousette, Finlay tells about the formation of the Finger Lakes and the Great Lakes. He discusses Amish communities, hoosiers, and log cabins, as well as the botanical gardens in St. Louis, and the music of Chuck Berry. Clearly, Finlay is a well-educated dog with a wide variety of interests. He still has a long way to go, however - in fact, he still has two thirds of the country to cross before arriving in Southern California.