Unknown Groundhogs Day Headlines

It's simply amazing to me the kind of connections you make with people as you go through out life. You meet people from obscure places, people that you may not become good friends with, but still you like them enough to tell people you know them when something happens in the town that they are from. Well, I had a couple of those acquaintances drop me a couple headlines in their local newspapers the other day. Now, these are stories that most of the world has never heard about. But to a couple of small communities, these headlines are the talk of the town!




" @punxphil 6 more weeks of winter!! lol!"



This headline actually came out of Punxsutawney, PA, the home of the annual Groundhogs Day Celebration. One of my roomates at school was from Punxsutawney, and his name was Bill. He was the son of Punxsutawney Phil and his wife Jill. Anyways, apparently the tradition of the groundhog coming out of his hole and seeing his shadow has been marred by controversy within the town recently. The Groundhog apparently got an iPhone for Christmas 2 years ago and they set up a twitter account for him. So now instead of actually coming out of his hole, he just tweets the updates. They ran the actual tweet that the Groundhog posted as the headline in the town's paper. It appears that the Groundhog already knows the weather pattern and apparently doesn't need to come out of his hole to see his shadow. The article also mentioned that researchers at Penn State University are looking for ways to use groundhogs for daily weather forecasting.

This next headline came out of a small village in southern Argentina. I once hit an exchange student from this small village as he was walking across a cross walk at night This is what we talked about as i drove him to the Emergency Room. He emailed me the article and the headline read like this: "Muchos Frios Se Dices Felipe". Now, for those of you who don't speak Spanish or really do speak Spanish, i believe the translation sounds something along these lines: "Much Cold Says Phillip", an obvious reference to the additional 6 more weeks of winter. It has been said that the village of Puxatonia in Argentina has a very similar longstanding tradition to the Groundhogs Day here in the US. Felipe, pulls out a mole and if the mole sees his shadow, then it is a short winter and spring will soon arrive. But there is a catch; the mole that they use is a blind mole. Now, i know what you are thinking; "A blind mole can't see his shadow". I thought the same thing at first. (I then quickly thought if they could do laser surgery on the moles's eyes, or now how they hook up the video cameras to your brain so you can see, but i determined that they probably wouldn't be too excited to invest these amounts of money into a mole when you could probably trap a new one in a garbage can or someplace). But i soon found out the reasoning for this; the town is so far south that they have really long winters anyways. Once he got some anasthesia in him at the hospital, he came clean and told me that the whole scam came about in the 1970's as a way to try to increase tourism. They really must have liked what the event has done to Punxsutawney, PA.

I found one more item to note, although it isn't an actual article. I was reading the police blotter and found that officers were called to a bar in northern West Virginia. There was a complaint that a drunk groundhog had been in a dispute and had burrowed under the bar. When officers arrived, the disgruntled groundhog had previously been asked by the bartender to vacate the premises do to unruly behavior. As an act of defiance, the groundhog dug his way under the bar and later had to be retrieved by a Search and Rescue team. No charges have been filed at this time.

So as you can see, Groundhogs Day is a little more exciting than we often think it is. It may even be worthy of some significant attention, like say, acknowledging that we have an entire day set aside. Just think, if we have a whole day set aside for a groundhog, what would we have to set aside for an elephant?