Just a few days ago I was talking to my daughter at the kitchen table when she suddenly said (staring out the window- yes, out is a preposition here), "There's a HUGE animal up in that tree. I think it's a woodchuck!" I foolishly said, "It can't be. Woodchucks can't climb." Nonetheless, there it was, about twenty feet off the ground in a spindly dogwood: a woodchuck the size of Orson Welles (and just as innovative). I had never in my life seen one in a tree, and it drove home to me just how hopeless the war is.