On February 2, the poor animal was pushed out of its burrow, awakened from hibernation, so that the residents of Punxsutawney could perform a ritual that has been going on for 120 years. According to the age-old belief, if the groundhog sees its shadow, it will go back to sleep for another six weeks and winter will continue. If it is cloudy and there is no shadow, the groundhog will not return to its burrow, meaning spring is just around the corner. This year, the sleepy Phil, having cast his shadow, returned inside, depriving Americans tired of winter of hope for an early thaw.
For inexplicable reasons, Americans trust the groundhog more than meteorologists with all their satellites and computers, despite the fact that Phil's forecast has been correct only 39% of the time. Groundhog Day was first officially celebrated in the United States on February 2, 1886. Since 1887, records have been kept of whether the animal saw its shadow or not. According to the mayors of Punxsutawney, the groundhogs named Phil have seen their shadow 95 times, have not seen it 14 times, and the records for another nine years have been lost.
From Phil's point of view, 2006 can be chalked up as not the best year. And yet, Groundhog Day seems to be just the case where the process attracts more than the result. Several tens of thousands of people come every year to watch Phil being woken up, while the population of Jefferson County, where Punxsutawney is located, does not exceed seven thousand. Phil himself lives in a comfortable burrow, where a constant temperature is maintained, under the supervision of the best local veterinarians. He is fed greens, fruits, and vegetables, although Phil of the latest generation (over a hundred years, quite a few groundhogs have changed) likes dog food. Not only local authorities take care of Phil. The groundhog has a fan club that unites more than 30,000 people. Groundhog Phil, as he goes into hibernation in the fall, does not suspect that people grandiloquently call him "Phil of Punxsutawney - seer of seers, sage of sages, predictor of predictors, and distinguished weather prophet."
In general, the very tradition of the current show has its roots in German settlers. True, in Germany forecasts for spring were made differently: it was not a groundhog that was to wake up, but a badger, and not in February, but in March. However, this is no longer remembered across the ocean, and the tradition returned to Europe (thanks in part to the famous Hollywood film) already in the American version. And now, on February 2, groundhogs are publicly woken not only in Pennsylvania. Even in Ukraine, they have their own groundhog, Timka, who has been deprived of the legal right to winter sleep for the third year in a row. This year, Timka, who lives at the biological station of Vasily Karazin Kharkiv National University in the village of Gaidary, like his American counterpart, could not help but see his shadow: the sun was shining over Ukraine.
But Russian biologists are not yet giving in to the fashionable belief. In Moscow, for example, there is no official groundhog of their own. True, as the press secretary of the Moscow Zoo, Natalya Istratova, noted, "even if there were one, given our climatic latitudes, it would still be sleeping." She added that the zoo does not plan to keep these animals at all. Of course, there are a few enthusiasts who keep groundhogs at home, but their public display requires considerable funds. First of all, for building a special burrow. According to Istratova, since these animals actively dig in the soil, it is necessary to dig a large pit under their enclosure, which then has to be concreted and then filled with soil. If this is not done, the rodent could penetrate underground into neighboring enclosures.
However, everyone who remembered Groundhog Day on February 2 pays attention primarily not to the meteorological aspect of this holiday. They simply really like the film "Groundhog Day," which is not about the weather at all, but about how much just a single day can mean in a person's life. Even if it seems like an ordinary hibernation.