The hemtra appears in some medieval encyclopedias. It is a very small animal that lives in parts of Germany. The male and the female gather food in the summer, with which they live in the winter. They store this food by making heaps on the ground. The female and male have different dispositions: the female is greedy and the male is parsimonious, which causes conflict over how much food each gets.

Possibly the marmot (Scanlan, page 141).