What about the groundhog?

(ozoni11's photos)

Here it is, the 15th of February, 2008. I live in southwest Michigan and we are in the throes of winter. As a child, I loved the winter time. The sledding, building snowmen and snow forts, snowball fights, making angels in the snow and ice skating. That was then………..now back to real life at the age of almost 62 (unless you’re dyslexic, then I’m only almost 26)!

It’s cold out there. It’s 8:30 PM and the temp is 14º. There is no wind tonight (yet anyway) so there is no windchill to report. Last weekend our temperatures were in the single digits with wind gusts between 40-50 mph, making the windchill at times -23º……..now that’s cold!

On February 2nd, someone a long time ago decided that if the little groundhog saw his shadow on that day, we would have 6 more weeks of winter. Where in the world they (whom ever ‘they’ are) came up with this theory is beyond my comprehension. If groundhogs can predict the weather, why do we need meteorologist? And I was taught in school that groundhogs were some of those animals that hibernate for the winter. That being the case, how could he see his shadow if he’s asleep? I’ll tell you how. Those same ‘they’s’ decided they should wake him up instead of letting him sleep!

I think we should just leave the poor little guy alone and let him sleep. At least he won’t see his shadow and maybe, just maybe, we won’t have six more weeks of winter. Maybe spring would come early, although I don’t put much trust in the whole theory anyway, but we could give it a try……………at least once!