You're listening to Away With Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett.

And this week I want to start the show with an apology.

Oh.

You remember the call we had from John?

He lived in Tennessee, and he wanted to talk about whistlepigs, the term whistlepig,

and how that's another name for Groundhog.

Well, in that call, I mentioned marmots, and I said that they were small and mouse-like.

And we got an email from David Bainbridge in Miramesa, California.

And David writes, you have slandered marmots by saying they are small and mouse-like.

Our western marmots are magnificent creatures, lovely golden fur and chunky, up to 12 pounds.

They do whistle.

I've watched them at work, asleep in the sun, and it play in the Sierra and Colorado Rockies.

One of my favorite memories is of a couple of young marmots enjoying sliding down a snowy slope in spring.

They would romp back to the top to go down again.

Another time in Colorado, we found two marmits living in old, quite large boilers from a long abandoned mine.

They looked like crew members on a steampunk submarine.

That's awesome.

David, you'll be happy to know.

We put up a fine specimen of a marmot to illustrate that entire episode, all right?

We did indeed.

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