00:00It all started six years ago when I noticed some crop damage, with chunks being taken
00:08out of the tomatoes, cucumbers, one chunk onto the next one, another chunk.
00:14I was really puzzled, so I put my security camera onto the garden.
00:20I was at work, got a notification on the phone, out of nowhere, pops up this groundhog, starts
00:25chewing in the camera with all of this swagger, like, yeah, I'm the one here, eating your
00:31vegetables, what are you going to do about it?
00:34I was blown away.
00:35It was me against this groundhog.
00:37Every day, I was thinking of ways to keep him out.
00:41I would build a fence really high, I would put logs and wood and stuff underneath.
00:46But no matter what I did, it would fail.
00:48And every day, he would pop up into the camera, same look on his face.
00:58Around August, I've been eyeing up this big, juicy tomato for three weeks, and today was
01:02the day I was going to come home, make a sandwich.
01:04I went out to the garden, and that same tomato had a big chunk taken out of it.
01:10And it was that moment there that I was like, all right, I give up.
01:14He probably had the same thoughts, like, I'm just going to wait for that thing to get real
01:18ripe, and I'm going to go take a bite out of it.
01:20So he beat me to it.
01:21At that point, I just stopped fighting.
01:22This is his land, too.
01:24I just embraced it.
01:28One day, I get a notification, and I'm thinking, oh, it's Chunk again.
01:31But two of them pop up into the camera.
01:33I guess Chunk loved it so much, he brought his girlfriend Nibbles to show off, and now
01:38I have two groundhogs to deal with.
01:41My harvest was going down, so everybody was losing their cut of the organic vegetables
01:47that they looked forward to.
01:49My mom, my family.
01:51But then I saw the baby Chunks.
01:54So I was like, okay, I'm going to have to give them their very own garden.
01:59So my whole family embraced it.
02:02My boys were out there every day helping me.
02:09My mom ended up getting her own garden that I helped her with.
02:12It's my grandfather who taught me everything about gardening.
02:15He just recently passed at the young age of 99, and I got the green thumb from him.
02:22I really enjoy seeing the moments with Nibbles and Chip Nugget or Chibbles when they're trying
02:27to share a tomato or a carrot with mom, and mom's just sitting there letting it happen,
02:33and the baby's just getting juice all over its face, just trying to eat, too.
02:39It's so wholesome.
02:41That really brings it home, the fact that they're really not much different than we
02:44are.
02:45They're just taking care of their kid like we take care of ours.
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