He has a bear's face and a body that makes him look like a beaver. My wife named him "George" when he wandered onto our tiny urban yard early last fall.

George is a groundhog, a rarity in my neighborhood, where the houses are 100-year-old vinyl-sided three-deckers that are, in many cases, less than 15 feet apart.

George made himself at home in our little side yard, digging himself a fine hole that emerged just under the silver chain link fence that separates our yard from a wedge-shaped overgrown piece of ground no one owns or mows.

My mother-in-law, to whom we rent our first floor, soon learned to make little sandwiches out of Ritz crackers and peanut butter, which she threw out the window to George, whose sleek, waddling self seemed pleased with the bounty. He retired to his hole this winter rather fat, as a groundhog should be when he goes down to hibernate.

And the New England winter lashed our yard, yellowed the grass, stripped the trees to bones, buried the dead grass in snow or glistened it with ice.

I would sit in my small den, in my green leather chair, hearing the sleet hit the windows like birdshot, and I'd read, maybe a book about the Crusades, and I'd think of George, safe in the darkness of his hole, turning his bear's face more deeply into sleep, sighing in some dream of the sunlit lawn between the house and the trash barrels, a space of some 20 feet.

George emerged with the spring, skinny and eager for peanut butter and cracker sandwiches.

Last weekend, I broke the ground for the garden my wife and mother-in-law grow. They planted five tomato plants, onions and some basil.

And this evening, my wife, Deborah, hung from the waist up out of our second-floor apartment window, clapping her hands furiously.

"Bad groundhog!" she yelled "Bad groundhog!"

George continued to nibble the green shoots of the onions, then waddled over to take bites of the tomato plants.

"The hell with it," my wife said. "Almeida's fruit stand will be open soon, and I can buy all the damn tomatoes I want."

I didn't always live in a city. I grew up in the Midwest, and I hunted. George would be an easy kill from the second-floor window. I could probably do it with a pistol. If I did it on July 4, the gunshot would blend in with the fireworks. No cops.

I won't.

George has got a spot, like I have a spot. When the sleet bounces off the frozen grass, I am dozing in my chair, warm in my den, and he is sleeping warm in his hole.

If I shot him, I'd have to bury him. Maybe, if he was still a little bit alive, I'd have to whack him in the head with the shovel.

It's a cold world. But George and me, we're gonna be all right. We have a spot.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features and cartoons by other Creators Syndicate writers, visit www.creators.com. Dion's book of Pulitzer Prize-nominated columns, "Between Wealth and Welfare: A Liberal Curmudgeon in America," is available for Kindle and Nook.