Washington (dpa) – The world's most famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, is to forecast the weather in the United States again Thursday for Groundhog Day, an observance of midwinter in the United States. Animal rights activists, though, are less than happy about the annual ritual, which is more silly than solemn. Phil, they claim, would gladly skip Groundhog Day; it is not nice to pull a drowsy rodent out of his well-earned slumber just to get a weather forecast. However, tradition is tradition. Phil has long been hailed as a giant of US meteorology and regarded as a “living barometer.” Bill Deely, president of the Inner Circle of the Groundhog Club in the small town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, is to don his tuxedo and top hat again. Shortly after sunrise, in front of a cheering crowd, he is to pull the hibernating animal out of his burrow and into the daylight. If Phil sees his own shadow and returns into his hole, people should get ready for six more weeks of winter. If it is cloudy and he does not see his shadow, however, then spring is in the air, and everyone can rejoice. As every year, Punxsutawney is all set for an invasion of reporters and curious onlookers, no matter how dubious the traditional forecasting method. The 1993 film Groundhog Day turned Phil into a global star. Since actor Bill Murray had to live through the same day over and over again, tens of thousands of people flock every year to the friendly little town in Pennsylvania, while several million viewers watch the ritual on television. “Phil is more than a groundhog – he is a legend,” says retired high school teacher Ron Ploucha, a member since 1997 of the Inner Circle, the 15-person leadership of the Groundhog Club, whose job it is to take care of Phil and of his “wife,” Phillis. Ploucha will not say just how many Phils there have been in the 126-year history of the event. There is only one, he insists. Groundhogs, which are a species of ground squirrel, do not usually live much beyond 10 years, even in captivity. Ploucha stresses with a wink that this is quite an extraordinary groundhog: every summer he takes a magic potion that keeps him young. Animal rights activists object to the ritual, no matter how tongue in cheek. “It's pretty bad that Phil has to go through that scary ordeal just for the fun of the people,” says Carrie Snider, spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). PETA has long demanded that Phil be allowed to retire and be replaced with a robotic groundhog: “We don't think that the tradition would be dishonored thereby.” The Groundhog Club disagrees. “Replacing Phil by a robot – that's absurd. Of course, that would put our tradition at risk,” says Ploucha. Groundhog Day is believed to have its roots in the legends of Native Americans and of German settlers. The Christian immigrants believed that on Candlemas, exactly 40 days after Christmas, groundhogs awoke from their hibernation. This specific tradition is such a crowd-pleaser that many groundhogs in other towns now compete with Phil. Phil's ability to predict the seasons has often been questioned. “It really isn't a ‘bright' idea to take a measure such as a groundhog's shadow and use it as a predictive meteorological tool for the entire United States,” experts from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have said. Only about 40 percent of Phil's forecasts have been accurate. Last year, the animal stayed awake in the belief that spring was just around the corner, only for a snow storm to follow, the so-called Groundhog Day Blizzard. Punxsutawney Phil's fans are undeterred. “I guarantee that Phil is a lot cuter than anybody at NOAA,” says Ploucha. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/bFe8n Tags: Groundhog Day, Phil Section: Animals, Latest News, North America
