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Charlie and the Whistle Pig

Charlie and the Whistle Pig

Last updated on: June 9, 2026 at 11:39 pm by Mary Pezzulo

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Charlie and the Whistle Pig 2026-06-09T23:39:11-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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a groundhog like the one that alarmed Charlie, in a yard much tidier than my own

image via Pixabay

Charlie the cat is determined to protect the garden.

Gardening, as you know, is my therapy. It makes my life worth living. I am nothing without the backyard vegetable patch. Every year, as soon as the world thaws out in March, I am outside in the backyard shoveling compost and guinea pig manure over the soil to get the garden ready. Every spring, I hoard seeds and grow seedlings in the window. Every summer I squeeze more food out of that little plot. This year I’ve outdone myself: I planted four summer squash, one winter squash, sunflowers, herbs and lettuce, cantaloupe and watermelon, lettuce of two kinds, broccoli of two kinds, fifteen tomatoes of six different kinds, eggplant, hot peppers, sweet peppers, potatoes, sunflowers, popcorn, bush beans, strawberries, grapes and black raspberries. The neighborhood children are forbidden to go to the garden unless I’m with them, for fear they’ll step on a plant. I plan to bring bushels and bushels of food to my neighbors, and give everyone a happy summer.

Late last week I was irritated to glance out my window and see The Princess, who lives two doors down, running through the garden by herself.

“Miss Mary, I saw a beaver!” said the Princess, when I opened the door to repeat the rules to her. “I saw a beaver! I saw a beaver!”

I dashed outside in time to see a great fat furry rump disappear into the waist-high weeds beside the Haunted House. It was not a beaver: it was a groundhog. A woodchuck. A varmint. A damned beast. In Southern Appalachia, they call that rodent a “Whistle Pig,” but nobody uses that term up here. Groundhogs might be the only animal in the world I truly despise, besides a bedbug. I will rescue wasps from the pool with my bare hands and gently trap spiders under a cup to release outside, but I cannot stand groundhogs. Groundhogs are marauders who ruin a garden.

The groundhog had already done his work. The broccoli seedlings were all gone, and the lettuce had been chewed to the stubs.

I told the story of the robbery to Jimmy’s boy, who looked grim in a grown-up, Appalachian way that I am at a loss to describe, as if he were forty years old and I was telling him about a murder.

“All right,” he said, sternly. “There’s only one thing to do. We have to shoot it. You need to buy me a BB gun.”

He was offended when I declined.

That night, after I planted more broccoli and watered the garden, I sprinkled the edges of the vegetable patch with hot pepper and stood up plastic forks in between what was left of the lettuce. I got out that old no-kill groundhog trap where I’d once caught a possum, and filled it with cantaloupe.

Charlie watched in bemusement until it was time to go to bed. But she didn’t sleep.

Charlie still sleeps in the basement root cellar, most of the time. She usually plays with me for half an hour before she lies down in her box of old blankets. But that night, she wouldn’t lie down. She kept staring nervously at one wall. I finally realized that the cause of this was the groundhog. One wall in the root cellar has a door in it that was sealed shut years ago by the landlord. On the other side of the door is the crawl space under the back porch, right behind my compost heap. There’s a big gap where a groundhog could get in and hide, without having to burrow. Charlie could smell the rodent in there, and it was driving her mad. I tried to calm her, but to no avail.

The next evening, Charlie wouldn’t even go inside.

She’s happily stood by the basement door waiting to be put to bed, every night since we started putting her to bed in the basement in the January polar blast. She only likes to be outside during the day. But she absolutely refused to go in. I ended up standing in the garden at sunset, petting her and promising that we were in no danger, just as the groundhog made an eerie sound from under the porch. The reason a groundhog is called a “whistle pig” in other parts of Appalachia, is that they whistle. They make a sound that’s something like a cross between my guinea pig’s squeal and the tweeting of a bird. The groundhog under the back porch sounded off, and then another groundhog from across the alley replied. They echoed each other for at least twenty seconds. The cat reacted as if she’d just been electrocuted: her whole body stiffened up, and her tail stood on end. Eventually, she sat on top of the porch, just over the whistling crawlspace, her legs folded under her like the Sphinx. That was where she stayed all night.

The next day, I couldn’t find her at all. I searched up and down the alley, calling her name, but she wouldn’t come. I didn’t see her until nearly midnight, when I found her pacing up and down the berm behind our house, vigilant, lashing her tail, and I couldn’t get her to come inside. And then, on Monday morning, she was missing yet again. I did not see her until just before bedtime. This time, she was in the yard, curled up on the grass, looking exhausted.

I gave her a bowl of water, which she drank greedily. There are plenty of birds and rats that a stray cat can eat in LaBelle, but there isn’t a ready water source. She was parched. I sat with her on the grass, offering kibble and scratches behind the ears. I thanked her for being so vigilant about the whistle pig, but I promised there wasn’t a need. It was all right to give it a rest.

I contemplated the strange and tragic way that Charlie had come into my life in the first place.

I remembered meeting the children I’ve referred to as the Artful Dodgers, living in their slum house, with their hoard of starving pets. I thought about the ways I’d tried to help, and only made a bigger mess. Of Charlie, all skin and bones, wandering onto my porch last year and becoming mine. Of the day they disappeared. Of everybody I’ve tried to help in this strange, dark, terrible city, and the people who have helped me. People and animals come in and out of my life, and I’m grateful for them all.

I didn’t hear the whistling of the groundhog under the porch anymore. I think the constant prowling of an anxious cat scared him off.

The next morning, I went out and found Charlie sleeping on the porch of the haunted house next door.

She followed me as I did my chores. When it rained, I opened the side door to the basement, and she sat on the landing watching it come down.

There’s a meaning to all of this.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to “The Little Portion” on paypal or Mary Pezzulo on venmo

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