Ice House Groundhog
The chain link junkyard behind the defunct ice house was his kingdom, and a wretched kingdom it was. Forgotten hulks of metal nested in the wire grass, a pitted and pocked hive of mechanical leprosy. Shattered shell fragments and crushed bone peppered the animal trails with the suggestion of long buried teeth. The perimeter fence was little more than a memory of security. The rusted tops of ivy laden chain link sagged several feet from the spindly array of barbed wire spanning above.
Some would call such a scene little more than a decrepit wasteland. The groundhog called it paradise.
True enough the sizable colony of feral felines paraded through on a regular basis, littering the day with their pungent ass juice and slicing the night with screams of battle, but the groundhog was king. His burrow was deep and strong, the network of tunnels sufficient to even outwit the resident canine, Luke.
In one corner of the kingdom, two steel posts had shifted open during the recent rains, granting egress to any daring enough to venture forth. The groundhog was such a creature.
Yes, there was truth to the rumor that the groundhog had fled during the great vulture investigation of summer’s fall, but those were days long past, and the shadows were short and crisp with winter’s promise. The royal mammal slunk from the borders of his kingdom to listen to the whispered voices which caromed along the narrow alleyway beyond.