Nevin Hurst, age 13, of Terre Hill, Indiana, for his question:

What is a marmot?

There are marmots in Kashmir, in China and in other parts of Asia. There are marmots in the Alps and in North America. All of them are big, fat ground squirrels, rather slow in their ways and fond of grasses. Our western marmot has a shrill, high whistle which can be heard a mile away. We call him the whistler or the hoary marmot, though we have a more everyday name for the common marmot of the plains and the prairies,

This fellow is our well known woodchuck, also known as the ground hog, though he is no relation at all to the pig. The ground hog is the only American animal to have a day named in his honor. February 2 is Ground Hog Day, the day on which this fellow is supposed to wake up from his winter sleep to study the weather. Actually the old lazybones never pokes his nose outside his winter burrow before March.