Pinch Hitting For Punxsutawney Phil

Selling global warming—or climate change to use the current term—has been tough this winter. I’ve taken to watching some of the too-many awards shows so I can join in the important conversations at my local coffee haunts. Usually the weather is a safe topic. Not so anymore.
Since I’m unabashedly addicted to the Weather Channel, the build up to Groundhog Day this year had me in a cold sweat for a week. I realized that Punxsutawney Phil, Buckeye Chuck and a host of other fuzzy weather prognosticators were calling the shots for their own backyards. I needed something closer to home.
With the thermometer bumping its head against 22 degrees, any self-respecting whistle pig is tucked seriously underground. Groundhogs, being one of those critters that truly hibernates, are only going to wake up for the three letter word beginning with s. And I don’t mean sun.
I did a bit of research and found that groundhogs are related to squirrels. Perfect! I have plenty of those around and even the whacky animal rights people aren’t going to get bent out of shape if I use a squirrel for weather forecasting. If you dig deep enough into this tedious tradition you’ll find that waaaaaayyyy back, people used badgers, even bears, to do this weather prophesy stuff. I guess it’s easier to lift a groundhog up for the cameras than it would be a bear.
I looked over my current crop of long-tailed critters and determined which in the lot would make the best fly tying material—just in case things went terribly wrong and he ended up going to the big bird feeder in the sky. I picked out the most-likely candidate and dubbed him Sagamore Sam. I liked the alliteration and if we had to put his full name on a death certificate, it would look cool—to say nothing of monogrammed T-shirts, SSS.
He appeared to be shy, even reluctant about participating in any kind of event as critically important as calling the weather shot six weeks out. I explained to him that even Punxsutawney Phil, who has a national reputation, only gets it right about 39 percent of the time. He countered with the knowledge that 39 percent was better than the local TV people—and they all have nicer hair. I told him Phil has a heated “burrow,” even a special language spoken only on his day, so maybe we could work something out?
So the deal is, no one touches him, he gets a bag of peanuts for his trouble and only pictures of his left side.
Regardless of how this turns out we still get six weeks of winter. We need some new traditions.