Let's honor this one in the breach...

"You've made a powerful enemy Chuck..."

-Bloomberg, threatening a Goundhog

So the bad news is the groundhog saw its shadow. The good news is that groundhogs can neither speak nor predict the weather, so I don't know, just keep an eye on your phone's weather app. According to news site Staton Island Live, Puxnhatawney Phil is only right fifty percent of the time while other sources place that number in the upper thirties. Of course, Silive.com goes on, with no small amount of grossly misplaced hometown pride, to point out that their own groundhog, Staton Island Chuck has a hit rate in the upper nineties. Oh, and fun fact, Chuck also once bit Mayor Bloomberg.

Look, I take no pleasure in saying this,
but what did they actually think was 
going to happen? I'm genuinely asking.

Groundhog Day is, if I haven't mentioned it before, dumb, but I guess I didn't realize that the holiday--wait, is it a holiday? Observance? Collective lunacy? Doesn't matter, the point is Puxnhatawney Phil isn't the country's only weather predicting 'hog. In addition to the one in Staton Island who now has a taste for wealthy blood, D.C. has it's own off-brand groundhog called Potomac Phil, and the town of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin has one called Jimmy and has taken the further step of declaring itself Groundhog Capitol of the World. Oh, and Jimmy bit their mayor as well.

"Hey, you know what's also really good
at predicting the weather? Science. 
Why don't we just use science?"

-Some meteorologist

I won't go so far as to say that this is animal abuse, but it's at least animal bothering and--wait, actually no, it might be animal abuse. I mean, these animal are supposed to be hibernating during the winter, aren't they? Not being disturbed by some dumbass mayor sticking their hands into their burrows to drag them blinking into the light and perform for a crowd of rubes who think rodents can predict weather. The full name of the groundhog who bit Sun Prairie Mayor Jon Freund was James T. Groundhog XI, suggesting that the Groundhog Capitol of the World is going through Jimmies at an alarming rate. 

Pictured: Mayor Jackson, and the groundhog 
whose mysterious death she helped cover up.
The question remains, what does she know?

More alarming still is the town of Wiarton in Ontario Canada where--huh? Yup, apparently not even reasonable Canada has been spared this preposterous waste of time. Anyway, Wiarton's ground hog--an albino alliteratively called Willy--didn't show up for his big moment in 2021, and was revealed later to be dead. Yeah, it was a cover up. Instead the Mayor, Janice Jackson--no, really-- grabbed some random person's hat, threw it up in the air and predicted an early spring. Sure, it's equally dumb, but equally accurate and they don't have to disturb a wild animal to do it.

All this is to say that I hope you'll join me in calling for an end to Groundhog Day as an institution. Not just because it's cruel to the animal--and it is, of course it is--but because it's unscientific nonsense and makes us, like, as a nation, look like a bunch of ignorant, superstitious, backwards yokels with nuclear first strike capability. Which indeed we are, but I'm saying let's not advertise the fact.

Of course, we also lead the world in conspiracy theories about
injectable microchips, Black Friday shopping related shootings and
creation museums, so I suppose our credibility is already a lost cause.