Massachusetts: Groundhog day gone wrong: Woodchuck tries to poke out through hole but gets stuck in storm drain instead

MASSACHUSETTS -- A groundhog trying to peek through the wrong hole on the ground in Massachusetts got stuck in a storm drain and required a police rescue.

The chubby rodent was found Friday morning in Danvers while a couple of local women walked their dogs.

Police officers from Danvers and nearby Wenham came to the rescue, alongside workers from the local public works departments.

'His face was partway up through the storm drain grate,' rescuer John Barbieri, of the Danvers Department of Public Works, told the Salem News.
   
The woodchuck's furry head peeked through the impossibly small hole in the grate, its face dazed while workers figured out what to do.

Barbieri and his team picked up the grate — the groundhog dangling by its neck — and moved it to the side of the road.

The rodent finally managed to wiggle itself free, fell back on the ground and ran away.

'He just needed some leverage,' said an eyewitness.

 

Cops say they don't often rescue animals in Danvers, a suburb some 25 miles north of Boston — but this isn't their first time, either.

'I know they rescued some ducklings earlier this spring that fell into a sewer grate,' Sarah Slavin, of the Danvers PD, told the Boston Globe.

(Daily Mail - August 10, 2014)