PETA WANTS TO REPLACE PUNXSUTAWNEY PHIL

Written by: Brian Neudorff

Groundhog Day is tomorrow, you know the day where everyone turns to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to see if the world famous groundhog Punxsutawney Phil sees or doesn't see his shadow. Legend has it, if Phil sees his shadow then we can all expect 6 more weeks of winter but if he doesn't then we can expect an early spring. Sounds pretty simple, right?

For just a couple of minutes every February second, in front of a large crowd, television lights and cameras Phil is held by the mayor for all to see then his declaration is read and he goes back to living the rock-star life any groundhog could wish for. But based on a letter and blog post written by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) this is not acceptable treatment of a groundhog.

"To most people, Groundhog Day—celebrated annually on February 2—is a welcome midwinter diversion, but Punxsutawney Phil is forced to be on display year round at the local library and is denied the ability to prepare for and enter yearly hibernation. These normally shy animals—who are constantly on alert when they are out of their burrows—become stressed when they are exposed to large, screaming crowds; flashing lights from perhaps hundreds of cameras; and human handling."

PETA's solution, replace Phil with a robot, more specifically an animatronic groundhog. Personally, I feel and think that PETA is really just looking for something at this point. In many of the places I have lived, the groundhog is very common in the wild. Because of this I've seen lots of these wild groundhogs succumb to being roadkill on the side of the road.

As I mentioned above, Phil lives the life of a rock-star, compared to other groundhogs, and he lives in a special, climate-controlled house, gnaws on the finest groundhog cuisine and receives cutting-edge rodent health care.

Groundhog Day is tomorrow and I will work on having updates from all the various groundhogs around tomorrow but if you want to know immediately when Phil makes his winter prediction, Phil is now going high tech with text messages. If you type "Groundhog" to 247365 you can get his prediction as soon as Phil makes it. Of course standard text messaging rates apply and I bet he will also "tweet" his response here: http://twitter.com/GroundhogPhil Now the big question remains, does Phil prefer a Blackberry or iPhone?