Groundhog Day Fraud Exposed!

Punxsutawney Phil seems to be a fraud.  Not that it is his fault

Shadow or no shadow, Phil should not be able to predict anything except a good crowd on Gobbler's Knob, so named exactly why?  Did a turkey see its shadow initially?  Or does Phil's tree stump bear some physical resemblance I don't want to think about?

Groundhog Day has been going on since 1886 in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania and has been questionable from the beginning.

Apparently, the Germans came up with the shadow-seeing legend.  That does not account for the length of the town's name, it being an Indian thing.  The Germans used a hedgehog for shadow-casting, which is a lot like a porcupine to us Americans.  Phil is neither hedgehog nor porcupine?  He is not.  He is a groundhog, not a spiny piece on him, except maybe for the formidable backbone that lets him foist his fraud upon us all February 2nd every year.

The legend has to do with Candlemas and clear skies meaning "Oh, sh_t. And chop more wood."  Candlemas, itself, has to do with Jesus, Mary and Joseph, but not the mild oath Catholics grew up with.  Forty days after Jesus was not born on December 25th, the trio went to Jerusalem so Jesus could meet the locals.  Hence, the position of Candlemas is fake, too, since Jesus was not born anywhere near December 25th. 

Leaving the fundamental error aside, clear skies on the wrongly calendared Candlemas meant more damned winter.  The Germans figured that if it was clear, a hedgehog would see its shadow if it poked its spiny head out of the ground after hibernating most of  winter.  That part makes sense:  Who wouldn't see a shadow on a clear winter's day?  You might even be able to pick out tiny shadows of the hedgehog's spines.  Unless, of course, the hedgehog didn't have any and looked like a groundhog.

Legend-loving Germans migrated, passing themselves off as harmless Dutch, flocking to Pennsylvania like so many turkeys (of which Pennsylvania had so many already that Ben Franklin lobbied for the gobbler as our National Bird, knob and all).  To their dismay, they could not find a hedgehog.  Surprisingly, they couldn't find a porcupine, either, at least not one they could pick up and show off to an assembled awestruck crowd.  Groundhogs have a similar physique and are more pleasant to hold over one's head, so here we are at Phil.

Legends are legends, normally, because no one really knows the truth behind them.  But the truth--the brutal truth--is that the origins don't matter in this case.  Phil lacks the one key element needed to make the legendary prediction work, leaving the spines for Europe to pick up:  Phil does not hibernate!

Hibernating groundhogs, and maybe hedgehogs, snooze during the winter without eating to speak of.  To conserve energy (take notes America), they drop their body temperature lower than you last significant other before you had to move out.  It goes down to 46 degrees (F, not C, which is only used for hedgehogs).  Their heart rates go from 100 to 15 beats a minute.  This is real deep, sub-REM sleep.  What wakes them up is a mystery, but that doesn't matter here, either, because Phil doesn't do any of this.

Nuts, you say?  Uh uh.  I read it today in a report on the Web. (yes, I got up early if not as early as Phil The Fraud).  Phil doesn't even live underground during the winter.  The chunky little bastard lives in a human-crafted little zoo, munching away wide-eyed the whole time.  A temperature modulated fake habitat a spines-throw (if there were any) from a library.  He didn't dig it himself.  Maybe even Germans didn't do it.  But there he is, not hibernating all winter until he is pushed, probably more than gently, out a from under what is surely a plastic tree stump for all attending to applaud.

I would like to believe that Phil is embarrassed by the dishonest spectacle, but goes along because he doesn't really like hibernating in stone cold ground for five months any more than you would.  And God knows what yummy food he gets from the librarian when he should be as inert as an economy I could mention.  I would do the same thing.  We all compromise when no one can see (I even used a FOX Views article as if it were factual in writing this piece.)

So, keep at it, Phil.  Predict away, you furry little fraud.  But I'm going to use the Farmer's Almanac from now on.