This is a groundhog, right?
This little guy gets around. I see him in our and the neighbors’ back yards as well as across the street in the horse pasture.
He’s the size of a very large cat or a raccoon. You can’t tell scale from this crop but you can see the fence behind him here. He’s always sifting through the dirt and grass when I see him.
He has a really interesting pattern on his coat, which makes me think he might not be a groundhog, since all the pictures of groundhogs I can find show a relatively uniform, mottled pattern. No real stripe action to speak of.
I also considered he might be a nutria when I first caught a glimpse of him but I’ve ruled that out since his house a groundhoggy face and a fluffy tail. Maybe this groundhog just has the mange or something.
Also, yesterday I heard the cats being unusually spirited in the early afternoon, and discovered that Jack had caught a lizard. It was a big bronze skink (thanks, @saraclark, for the ID). I let him play with it for a while, thinking he might let instinct take over and he’d kill and eat it and remember that he’s a cat and not just a cuddle-seeking/wire-eating tub o’ lard, but he just played with it, letting it get free just long enough to run and snatch it back up in his teeth and bat it around a bit, for 15 minutes until I started feeling bad and rescued the little guy and put it outside in a mud puddle, sans tail. It probably went off and died. Sorry about that, little skinkster. I was trying to let my cat have an authentic cat experience and the world is a very cruel place. Also, this house is a skink-free zone. Tell your friends.
It might be a badger, although I’m not sure. We had one in our backyard in Murfreesboro.