09.12.02 - 4:34 p.m.

Oh my god. The groundhog. I can't believe I almost forgot to write about this.

So Bassett, Moom and Dan have this groundhog-spotting ability. They can see them everywhere�on their little haunches alongside the road, frolicking in fields and generally anywhere one would pilot a vehicle. But I never see the groundhogs. I am either driving, or not quick enough to catch a glimpse, or the groundhogs are invisible to me. The only time I ever saw one was when it literally dropped out of the undercarriage of the car ahead of me and scampered off to safety. The Kamikaze Groundhog, we called it, but since I was with Bassett at the time I don't know if that counts as a sighting. Maybe it was just drawn to her, Queen of All Groundhogs.

But today. Today was the day of the biggest sighting of all. I was on my morning Starbucks run for the Tired Boss, and turned off the main drag to the Starbucks shopping center. As I headed down the ramp (slowly, since I was the only car on the road and I had no desire to get back to work any time soon), I saw something lumpen and rodent-like ahead of me in the other lane. "Oh, poor smushed animal," I thought. Then it moved. And it was MASSIVE. A humongous, living groundhog waddling slooooowly across the highway in front of me.

That groundhog is damn lucky that it decided to mosey in front of a Pennsylvania driver and not a New Jersey maniac. And that it was not a vole and I was not wielding my Barbie and the Rockers Van o' Death.