VIDEO: Canuck groundhog predicts early spring

 Well, it's Groundhog Day again.../// Well, it's Groundhog Day again.../// Well, it's Groundhog Day again... but you saw the movie right, so enough with the reference. 

If you're from some other part of the world and have no idea what I'm talking about, the residense of northeastern North America have a superstition that if a groundhog (aka woodchuck, as in "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?") sticks his head out of his burrow on February 2nd and sees his shadow, he gets frightened, goes back underground, and we'll have six more weeks of winter. If he doesn't see his shadow, it'll be an early spring.

Three groundhogs* have attained a degree of international fame [notority? Ed.] over the years, the best-known being Punxatawney (PA) Phil, featured in Groundhog Day, the movie. Walt, however, prefers Canada's Wiarton Willie. He lives so far north that he's white! OK, the original Willie was white; he died a couple of years ago and his successor appears to be the usual mousy brown. Anyway, he's better-positioned than Phil to notice the advance or retreat of winter weather. Watch this.

* Who's the third one (I hear you ask)? That would be Shubenacadie Sam, who lives way Down East in central Nova Scotia. If you want to go to wherever for next year's festivities... we should live so long... Walt recommends Wiarton. It's just down the road from Tobermory ON, at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula and therefore the Bruce Trail, the longest hiking trail in one state/province. You'd be unwise to try hiking the Trail in the dead of winter, but there you go...

And here's a follow-up from Blazing Cat Fur...