Every year, in the dead of winter, a couple guys dressed up in crazy outfits complete with tophats hunt down a ground-dwelling mammal and savagely yank him from his burrow.
That mammal’s name is Punxsutawney Phil.
With Groundhog Day fast approaching, PETA is calling for the end of the annual theatrics, demanding Phil be replaced with an animatronic robot.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wrote in a letter to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club this week that the time has come to end the decades-old tradition. PETA says the Club could begin using a high-tech animatronic groundhog that could actually predict the weather using artificial intelligence.
“Gentle, vulnerable groundhogs are not barometers,” PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman said. “PETA is offering the club a win-win situation: Breathe life into a tired tradition and finally do right by a long-suffering animal.”
Here’s what Ingrid Newkirk, president of PETA, said in the letter to the club:
Times change. Traditions evolve. It’s long overdue for Phil to be retired.
As a prey species, groundhogs actively avoid humans. Being in close proximity to the public causes these animals great stress. When Phil is dragged out of his hole and held up to flashing lights and crowds, he has no idea what’s happening. Being relegated to a library “habitat” for the other days of the year doesn’t allow him or the other groundhog there to dig, burrow, or forage. It’s no kind of life for these animals.
Using technologically advanced electromechanical devices such as animatronics instead of live animals is more popular than ever. We even have the technology to create an animatronic groundhog with artificial intelligence (AI) that could actually predict the weather. An AI Phil would renew interest in Punxsutawney, generating a great deal of buzz, much like Sony’s robot dog “aibo,” which walks, plays, misbehaves, and responds to commands. By creating an AI Phil, you could keep Punxsutawney at the center of Groundhog Day but in a much more progressive way. Talk about taking your town’s annual tradition in a fresh and innovative direction!
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. This is a generation whose members book rides on their smart phones and will never walk into a bank to deposit a check. Ignoring the nation’s fast-changing demographics might well prove the end of Groundhog Day.
We’d be happy to make recommendations for a sanctuary that would welcome Phil and the other Punxsutawney groundhog. Instead of working at cross-purposes, let’s collaborate to create a sunny future. I look forward to hearing from you.
If you’ve seen Phil before, you know that the groundhog isn’t really savagely yanked from his burrow. It’s a quaint little ceremony that draws massive amounts of tourist cash to the tiny town, featured in the great Bill Murray movie “Groundhog Day.”
But Phil doesn’t exactly live up to his full name, which is: “Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators and Weather-Prophet Extraordinary.” Since he first began making the prediction on whether we’d see six more weeks of winter because he saw his shadow on Feb. 2, data from the Stormfax Almanac shows that Phil’s six-week prognostications have been accurate only 39% of the time.
So maybe, just maybe, checking to see whether a groundhog saw his shadow on Feb. 2 is not the most accurate way to predict the weather.