Groundhog Day: Five or More Facts on the Chubby Chap

We aren't sure where you would most likely find a groundhog in Swampscott on the chubby critter's big mid-winter day — Feb. 2.

If it was summer you could find them many places around these parts, the town animal control officer tells us.

"Gosh, they are all over town," said Diane Treadwell, Swampscott's animal control officer. "I get calls about people seeing them in their yards, gardens, rock walls — you name it. I think they are adorable."

On Feb. 2, chances are that any Swampscott groundhog is still sleeping since they are true hibernators, according to Cornell University.

They go into a deep coma-like state in the deepest part of their burrow, below the frost line.

Their 20-inch, 12- 15-pound selves slow way down during hibernation. Their hearts barely beat and their body temperature hovers a few degrees above freezing, according to the University of Illinois Extension Service.

They typically rouse from their hibernation later in February.

Cornell also tells us that they appreciate the groundhog for the help it lends studying liver disease in humans.

"For more than 15 years, animals born at the world's only scientific source of disease-free woodchucks have led researchers to discoveries in treatment and prevention of hepatitis B infection and the liver cancer it can cause.

"A percentage of the wild woodchuck population in the United States is infected with a virus very similar to HBV, the human hepatitis B virus. Humans don't get hepatitis from woodchucks with WHV, the woodchuck hepatitis virus, but the virus and its effect on their liver is similar enough to make the woodchuck the best system we have for studying viral hepatitis in humans," explained Bud C. Tennant, D.V.M., the James Law Professor of Comparative Medicine who heads the woodchuck-re search project.

Woodchucks are said to be very clean animals that sometimes whistle when alarmed or when they are courting.

They eat a healthy diet of greens, fruits, and vegetables.

Groundhog tracks have four toes on the front paws and five toes on the back paws, the Illinois extension service says.

The tracks will be spaced about four inches apart when walking and twelve inches apart when running, the service says.