A family of fat things

For a while now, Paul and I have been watching a Groundhog that lives in our neighbor's yard across the street. We lovingly refer to it as our "fat friend," or sometimes "the fat thing," because of its overall dumpiness.

Today, I was looking out the window and I saw more than one creature moving out there.... As it turns out, our fat friend is a girl, and she has babies! We saw three little fat things toddling around at one point, but they kept popping in and out of the rocks, so there might have been even more of them out there. Can you find all three babies in this next picture?

Sooooo cute! I couldn't stop taking pictures of their chubby little faces.

The mother was doing something interesting, too -- she kept running to the bushes in the back of the yard, and returning to the rocks (and her burrow) a few minutes later with mouthfuls of... something:

I'm not sure what she was carrying, or what she was doing with it, but whatever it was (garbage?), it was going into the burrow to make her family happy.

Of course, now I'm in a bit of a quandary. Groundhogs can apparently do damage to the foundations of buildings with their digging, and this family definitely has a burrow right next to, and probably under, our neighbor's house. We've seen the momma Groundhog many times, and she's pretty bold, so it's hard to imagine that the people living in the house don't know she's there. If they don't know, however, I feel like I should probably tell them... but at the same time, I don't want the creatures to get hurt, and I'm not sure what the general attitude towards animals is around here. I think I will mention it, though, the next time I see our neighbors -- it would probably be better for everyone if the Groundhog family moved somewhere else, even if that means we won't get to watch them anymore.

We love you, fat things!