Bluish Barn

Groundhog day, sadly, has changed a bit since I was a youngster. This morning I took a little stroll through Wheeler Park, ready to snap a shot of a local critter, making a predictive reading for the spring. Unfortunately, groundhogs in the park (Wheeler Woody, who was a big fan of my basil plants, etc.) were feeling shy this morning, and I don’t blame them since these days, stepping out of the hole is like Vegas sensory overload with the blinking police kiosk on 4th and large neon column that have cropped up as part of the new “Depot neon district.”

As a kid, we a lot of hungry little groundhogs hung out around our house, although my mama usually chased them out of the yard and garden, clanging pots together. But we were often able to get a Feb 2nd groundhog reading from the kitchen window when they skittered out of their holes in the morning.

In today’s commercialized version, regional prophetic groundhogs are pampered celebrities, free-loading yuppie hogs who live in castles and order fresh baguette from Zingerman’s Mail Order and have serious media connections. The groundhogs don’t “emerge” or “wander” out of their “hole.” Penn’s Punxsatawny Phil is “pulled out of his heated stump-shaped home by handlers.” in Georgia, General Beuregard Lee is “enticed out of his antebellum mansion with Waffle house hashbrowns*.” 

What a weird world.

  Anyway, geographically closest “official reading” I could find comes from a prognosticating woodchuck in Howell, (apparently lives in a paper-mache house on a stage?) who says spring is around the corner. I sure hope we get some sledding in before that. 

*Note: while famous groundhogs are eating well, kids suffer.  Sort of. The traditional groundhog shaped cookies given to elementary school kids in Northern Cambria, Pennsylvania were banned when the school board members realized the cookies have 37% fat content, 2% over the allowable fat limit of the Pennsylvania wellness program.  WWGNDD?  Replace the oil with applesauce?  Eat the fatty cookies anyway?  You can probably guess.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 3:51 pm and is filed under neighborhood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.