Whether or not the groundhog as a predictor works depends on whom you talk to. Folks in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania--with tongue planted firmly in cheek--swear by it. Folks at the National Weather Service know it only as folklore.
Groundhogs, also known as woodchucks, seem nonplused. The relatively benign animals who favor the same rural settings as their cousins--ground squirrels, prairie dogs, and chipmunks-- mostly just go about their chores of digging dens and eating. Except in February, when a lot of them remain in hibernation. But if they are awake, they need to be vigilant. They can wind up as part of the food chain for hungry coyotes, eagles, or bears. Shadow and all.
Groundhogs are found throughout much of North America and are common in the east from Alabama and Georgia to northern Quebec and Ontario in Canada. Their range extends north to Alaska and through the southern Yukon and Northwest Territories.
Groundhogs are energetic diggers whose holes are also used by rats, mice and insects, skunks, raccoons, foxes, rabbits, and snakes. Groundhogs can weigh from 5 to 15 pounds; eat a wide variety of plants and roots; give birth to litters of approximately four in the spring; and are known to whistle when alarmed, to squeal when fighting or injured, and to sometimes bark, although no one is sure why. Because groundhogs move a significant amount of dirt in the digging of their burrows, they are credited with valuable soil aeration, although groundskeepers at golf courses, along with gardeners, are not counted among their greatest admirers.
None of that, however, can come close to the digging of an enterprising newspaper editor in the tiny Pennsylvania town of Punxsutawney (population: 6,700) when he wrote about a group of townspeople who set out to look for a groundhog one winter day in 1886. That story was the genesis of a tradition that eventually resulted in the creation of "Punxsutawney Phil," a garden-variety groundhog that the Punxsutawney Chamber of Commerce has since-- with the help of a lot more editors--parlayed into a lucrative tourist trade that, among other things, now generates the annual sale of more than $150,000 worth of groundhog souvenirs.
Phil, meanwhile, is lovingly cared for in the towns Groundhog Zoo, where he shares a burrow with Phyliss and their little groundhogs, helping prove that one of the motivations for groundhogs to break hibernation (aside from being hungry) is the approach of the mating season.
Phil is coaxed into the open every February 2 with great flair, great ceremony, and significant economic return for the town and the surrounding region northeast of Pittsburgh. (Phyliss stays home with the kids.)
Bill Cooper, a Punxsutawney banker who doubles as president of the Inner Circle of the Groundhog Club, said Groundhog Day began mostly as a way to interrupt long winters, when cabin fever was a legitimate illness in sparsely settled places--such as the Pennsylvania frontier.
The Canadian Wildlife Service has its own interpretation: "This popular old legend apparently came to North America with early settlers from Europe, where it is believed in some parts that bears or badgers behave in the same manner."
And the Canadians offered this clincher--although it was old news to the people of Punxsutawney--"Although most people recognize that the legend has no basis in fact, it provides a welcome midwinter diversion, which is usually promoted by the news media."
-FWS-
(EDITORS: Groundhog audio with a brief introduction is available for radio news editors at 1-800-521-3370, and to editors based in Washington, DC, at 208-4777. Web browsers can access the same audio with more groundhog information at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service homepage, http://www.fws.gov/)
