Groundhog's Day

Well Groundhog’s Day is almost over and apparently we are in for 6 more weeks of winter. According to United States and Canadian lore if a groundhog sees its shadow on February 2 there will be six more weeks of winter, if it doesn’t spring is coming soon, but that is not the whole story. The rest of the story would be PETA’s defense of the little rodent (also known as a woodchuck, land-beaver, or whistle-pig—who knew, not me).

PETA wants to replace Punxsutawney Phil with a robot because Phil is paraded, manhandled, and “forced to be on display year round at the local library and is denied the ability to prepare for and enter yearly hibernation…Add to that the displeasure of large, screaming crowds, flashing lights of cameras, and human handling.” Not sure how this makes Phil any different than celebrities stalked by the paparazzi on a daily basis, but apparently PETA doesn’t care about the human “animal”.

In my opinion a robot is a bad idea for several reasons. If it is snowing or raining the robot could short out, killing people with its deadly sparks; someone will have to program the robot to either stay out or jump back into its hole—seems to me like someone can fake the results and then what are we going to do, rely on the local weather people to figure out how to dress for the next month and a half; plus I saw Terminator (big screen and on FOX), robots KILL on purpose, not just when they accidentally electrocute people when the weather is foul—is PETA trying to slay us all?!

Phil, who according to William Deeley, the current president of the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club says Phil is “being treated better than the average child in Pennsylvania” and kept in a climate controlled environment, plus the State Department of Agriculture checks on him annually. Phil has a nice home, food, people to care for him, and he has a guaranteed date at least once a year—that’s more then I’m guaranteed, so they need to just leave it be.

Other things that happened on February 2nd:

1653, New York City (then called New Amsterdam) was incorporated
1790, the United States Supreme Court convened for the 1st time
1878, Greece declares war on Turkey (I started looking to see who won but slowly I didn’t care and gave up the search)
1922, James Joyce’s Ulysses was published in Paris (never read it, not even the CliffNotes)
1947, Farrah Fawcett was born (now I’m sad)
1962, Michael T Weiss was born (I’m a little less sad)
1964, GI Joe was first introduced (to America, he met Barbie later)
1977, Radio Shack officially started producing the TRS-80 computer (it was released on August 3, 1977) and cost $600
2007, Three tornadoes hit Central Florida, 42 people were killed

I’m off to crawl back into my bed, not for the 6 weeks Phil is planning, but until 8:00 am.