Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Wood

Hi! So it has been 11 months apparently since my last blog. I am not sure if it was the whole sidetracked by life thing or that I just didn't feel like I had anything witty to say. At some point the draw to blog was gain fame. And then I realized that there was five or so of you that tolerate my misspelled poor form of humor and generally tilted view of things. But to my five adoring fans and loving Husbear I promise to write you all into my will.

Felling the need to entertain myself and all y'all I asked a question of 25 or so people today. That question has been haunting me on and off for years now and I feel that it is time to put it to bed. Well that and the fact that it was really slow at work today and I had no intention of mentally participating in our technician meeting today. The question in question is: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Now I understand that this was not intended to be a riddle as much as a rhyme and is most likely just a rhetorical question designed to be a conversation starter. But what if it is really a riddle to be solved? Having the interwebs in my pocket I Googled this very question and the first thing that I found out was that a woodchuck and a groundhog are the same thing. See, I thought the same thing........bullshrimp! Why would there be two separate names for the same furry pelt. Go ahead, do your own research I will wait. Marmota monax is known as the groundhog, woodchuck and landbeaver. Dont say I never taught you anything.

Anyhow I received a dozen "A woodchuck could chuck........", Two "Assloads" and a few other random guesses. The closest being 100 lbs submited by a Graduate of the Colorado school of Mines. My favorite answer was "Personally I can chuck about 7 inches. After that there's a little gagging".

Not felling like I had a solid answer and figuring that someone somewhere had been paid by our government to figure this exact thing out I turned once again to Google. Questions were raised by some as to the woodchuck's desire to chuck wood, the density of said wood, his need to chuck the wood and his ability to chuck wood. But then like a beacon of truth in the fog there it was.

The amount of wood that woodchucks would chuck on a given day varies greatly with the individual woodchuck. According to a Wall Street Journal article, New York State wildlife expert Richard Thomas found that a woodchuck could chuck around 35 cubic feet of dirt in the course of digging a burrow. Thomas reasoned that if a woodchuck could chuck wood, he would chuck an amount equal to 700 pounds.

I am now content and will sleep in peace knowing that if a woodchuck can chuck 700 lbs of wood then I can write another blog, stay on a diet and go back to the gym.