Flash Fiction Friday: Ground Hog Day

We raised Chucky from infancy, which seemed to tamp down his natural ground hog aggression. It had been the middle of an April night, and I awoke  to a commotion around the giant skylight above our bed. An entire ground hog family was watching us sleep. I thought I was dreaming. But in the morning I found Chucky curled up at the base of the house. He must have lost his footing and slid down the skylight and got left behind by the family who lived in the forest next door. I took him to the vet who declared him healthy and gave us instructions of feeding. His favorite food turned out to be salad, so since we were vegetarians, it wasn't difficult setting out a separate plate every night. We also had three cats, and a squirrel (also raised from infancy) and at first we worried about homicides, but Chucky seemed to mind his own business, took no interest in cat food, and so peace was maintained in the home even after Chucky grew to be bigger than the cats. The next winter, Chucky got very lethargic around November and then disappeared. We couldn't figure out where he went. The vet said he was hibernating. I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, so I was hibernating in a way as well. I started sleeping a lot, dreaming of Chucky. I wondered if he would emerge from deep in some mattress on Ground Hog Day, but Feb. 2 came and went and he didn't appear, not to mention the fact that that meant six more weeks of winter and depression. We tried to forget about him. We tried not to think about our fears that he was stuck somewhere. Then, one night in March, I awoke to a commotion on the roof in the middle of the night. It was a Ground Hog family again partying on the skylight, staring in on us sleeping. The juveniles slipped and slid along the window. One of the older ones, I could have sworn was Chucky. He had that scar over his eye. A couple of weeks later we had a plumber in to fix a leak under the sink. There was a hole that went right through the floor and into the yard. Chucky had apparently slid right out. Maybe it wouldn't be such a long winter after all.