Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, July 22, 1995                   TAG: 9507240007
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SHE WISHES GROUNDHOG WOULD SEE ITS SHADOW

Now she won't go into her basement for fear of a face-to-face encounter. She thinks she's heard the trespasser rumbling beneath her floorboards.

A big, brazen groundhog is holding her captive in her own Northwest Roanoke home.

``I'm scared to go out my door,'' she said. Friends are bringing her groceries.

Tuesday morning, a large groundhog was seen dashing from bush to bush in the overgrown lot next to Motley's rented home on Loudon Avenue. Motley sometimes sees five offspring trailing the creature.

Animal control officers have caught a small groundhog and a young opossum in a humane trap in Motley's front yard, but the beast is still at large. Motley thinks it's too big to squeeze into the trap and steal her onion bait.

Fabric is ripped off the porch cushions, and what appear to be claw marks cover the foam pillows. ``If he can do this to the cushions, I know what he can do to me,'' Motley said.

She'd been told animals detest mothballs, but the animal brushed aside the ones she sprinkled over the porch furniture.

What looks like a large groundhog hole adjoins her foundation. She keeps sticking bricks in it, but the hole just widens.

Motley has done everything she can think of to run the critter off - sulfur gas in her basement and lots of intimidation. ``The more I'd stomp my feet, the more he'd come out of that hole.'' Sometimes, the groundhog sits on her sidewalk.

Jim Parkhurst, a Virginia Tech professor, has studied interaction between humans and wildlife for years. He's never heard of a groundhog getting so close to a house, but he said rabies or distemper could disturb its natural aversion to people.

Motley said she could smell the groundhog through her window, and Parkhurst says that's weird, too. Groundhogs are well-groomed and have little odor.

It's a groundhog, for sure, Motley insists; she knows her groundhogs from her skunks, raccoons and opossums.

M.W. Quesenberry, supervisor of Roanoke's animal control officers, has three suggestions: continued trapping, clearance of brush nearby, and maybe a mixture of Texas Pete hot sauce and dish detergent on rags stuck at groundhog entrances.

Whatever it takes, Motley will do it. ``It'll be me or him, from the way it looks. He's done worried me to death.''