So a bunch of people got up on a freezing cold winter morning in Pennsylvania to watch a hole. Actually, that may not even be true. They may simply watch some groundhog owner announcing the results of the owner having already watched a hole.
This has been happening since 1887. In a place with a simply horrible name: Gobblers Knob. Sounds like a fictional setting for a porn flick.
Needless to say, today's Phil is not the original Phil. Even the hardiest groundhogs in captivity live about 10 years. In the wild, they may live up to 6 years, and most live 1-3 years, thanks to traffic. Since all the Phils are in captivity, let's go with an 8 year life span. That's a plenty long life to pass on the weather knowledge to the little uns.
This would be the 15th generation of Phil. The Phil selection process must be interesting. Let's say we have the original Phil (our proverbial Adam) who copulates with the proverbial Eve, groundhog style. Groundhogs have one litter a year, with 2-9 pups. Which of those became the next Phil? Is it like royalty, where the oldest male gets the job? Is there fratricide, where one of the younger males knocks off the older male to rise in standing? Have there been any female Phils in years where there was no male lineage, or did the folks in Gobbler's Knob substitute a male groundhog just in case someone decided to look between its little legs?
And how do we know if the damn thing sees its shadow or not? I suspect a groundhog does not even know what a shadow is. Perhaps a frightened little expression appears on his face at the sight of a silhouetted apparition of himself, allowing the observers to say he saw it. Or perhaps a groundhog expert, trained in the ways of the groundhog (much like Carl in Caddyshack) interprets his actions as yay or nay.
Apparently in 112 tries he has seen his shadow 97 times. Why all the hubub, if he's going to predict six more weeks of winter 87% of the time? Besides, it's Pennsylvania, and it's February 2. Six more weeks of winter isn't exactly going out on a limb. A human with a groundhog sized brain could tell you that.
What happened in the other ten years? That is, if the first groundhog day was 1887 (122 years ago), but his record is 97-15, what happened in the other ten years? Sadly, we'll never know. The official site says for those years there is "no record". The last year with no record was 1899, which is the year the Groundhog Club was formed. "God forbid we miss any records hereafter" they declared!
In any event, no one takes this seriously anymore...not even the official Groundhog Club. On the other hand, I wonder if there is a single morning television show, whether network or local, that will not include it in this morning's stories.
Ubiquitous television news stories, and people standing in freezing weather, all to observe a tradition that came from the Germans use of a hedgehog (porcupine) in connection with predicting the weather on Candlemas thousands of years ago. As if religion does not serve as sufficient evidence, this whole groundhog thing reminds me what a strange species we are.
