Ground Hog's Day, 2008

Last year around this time I wrote a rather benign piece about Candlemas and Ground Hog’s Day.

I’m not feeling that pleasantly disposed about the whole thing this year. It’s been cold. My truck is still in the shop. And my kids have dispersed to the ends of the continent. (One has gone off to Eugene, Oregon while the other has returned to Grandma’s house in Linden, New Jersey.) I got a look at all the W2 forms and realized how much, even in retirement, we have had deducted from our income by Uncle Sam's hoods at the IRS. Capone would have been proud. Besides, have you looked at our presidential choices?
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Tomorrow is the first of February and we all know what that means. Saturday morning, February 2nd, west of here in the wilds of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania thousands will gather around a faux stump atop the inauspiciously named Gobbler’s Knob to watch a group of elderly gentlemen in top hats and tails perform a mystic rite that has been repeated annually since 1886. It's time to wake up Punxsutawney Phil and ask when winter will end.

One of the Inner Circle will reach into the stump and pull a sleepy little rodent, Punxsutawney Phil (we’ll just call him Phil from now on, ‘kay?) out of his winter’s burrow. They will hold the poor sod up for the admiring throngs and place him on a flat surface as the time the sun break is supposed to rise.

Everyone will hold their breath while this Groundhog, Phil, (also known as a Woodchuck and nothing more than a chubby little rodent) gets its bearings and opens one lazy eye. He’s been asleep since last October, you see, and wants nothing more than to return to the Land of Nod until sometime in late April or early May when the new grasses will have emerged and there's something to eat available. Yet, these hundreds—nay, thousands—of people are waiting for him to make a prediction.

Another of the Inner Circle leans forward quite gingerly (a sleepy groundhog may awaken in a foul mood!) to extract the desired information from Phil (plus one or two pertinent comments).

The major domo who has received the vital information (in the form of a scroll? Who knew Groundhogs could write!) will stand and proclaim the result of Phil’s careful deliberations between himself and his shadow. Will we have six more weeks of winter, or is spring right around the corner? Whatever Phil predicts, he’s going back to sleep when all is over. Yea, to sleep, perchance to dream of sweet, tender grass shoots and female Groundhogs named Phyllis.

The humans in the crowd will go their merry way and wait for the Spring Solstice on March 20, almost exactly six weeks in the future, to mark the true coming of Spring.

If you can’t be in Punxsutawney for the molestation of Phil, you can watch it all by going to The Official Website of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club where the Prediction will be made live. Broadcast festivities start at 7 AM EST. (With any luck Phil might wake up enough to bite his Handler or the reader of the Prognostication.)