Groundhog Day is this Sunday morning when communities all over North America wake up their groundhog mascots, haul them out of their nice warm burrows and we wait on whether they see their shadows. Obviously they will if it’s sunny and that means they run back into the burrow and six more weeks of winter. However, if it’s cloudy and snowy like what we’re expecting in Nova Scotia it means we’ll see an early end to winter. Our nearest groundhog, Shubenacadie Sam has about the same terrible success rate as the rest of the ground rats (Punxutawney Phil, Wiarton Willie) – somewhere between 37 and 39 per cent correct. Terrible stats , those!
So I rolled my eyes and shook my head when I saw PETA going after Punxutawney Phil in a press release the other day. They want the organizers to stop torturing the poor fellow. But just like a stopped clock is correct twice a day, PETA may have gotten this one right! They suggested that “Today’s young people are born into a world of terabytes, and to them, watching a nocturnal rodent being pulled from a fake hole isn’t even worthy of a text message.” They want to see the live groundhog replaced with a “cutting edge animatronic groundhog” that could be programmed to “actually predict the weather” using artificial intelligence.
I say why stop there? If you can do an animatronic groundhog, why not a T-Rex or Veloceraptor? Now that would really bring out the kids!
Who’s with me on this? Free Shubie Sam! Free Shubie Sam! Bring on the dinosaurs!
