entirely safe and fun

For now, he rests — but soon the stars will again be right, and the groundhog will arise from his long slumber!

Groundhog Day! That quaintest of traditions! Thousands gathered in the tiny town of Punxsutawney, PA (site may be slashdotted), for dawn rodent-watching and early-morning Straub-drinking, pounding longnecks as they greet their own long shadows in the chill pink light! No holiday is more Homeric than this, when the elements themselves gather in sympathy for a great groundhog and order themselves at his disposal.

That such a holiday is most famously observed in Pennsyltuckey — that frequently lovely but perpetually benighted region east of Pittsburgh and west of Philadephia — has long confused me, since no one there actually likes groundhogs; locals’ animus against burrowing rodents increases in proportion to their economic dependence on hooved livestock. A neighbor of mine in Lancaster once offered the pithy observation that “A spade is a tool for digging holes. A small-bore rifle is a tool for removing groundhogs.”