Kill Phil!

In my last post, I declared January to be a bitch because of several high accumulation snow storms that occurred. At the same time, I welcomed February in the midst of a most spring like weekend when temperatures climbed into the mid 50s. Now Monday comes, and true to predictions we got another 4-6 or 6-8 inches of snow.

I now declare the month of February to be Queen Bitch!

During this last weekend, our collective gazes were focused on Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, PA for the annual Ground Hog Day celebration, or the annual rousting of the critter from its den and forcing it to tell us what the weather will be for the next six weeks, despite the fact that we are technologically advanced and spend about a gazillion dollars a year on this technology that tells us what to expect for our weather in the foreseeable future. Yes, we have the intelligence and the wherewithal to predict whether we should dress comfortably when it is sunny, or crawl back into our holes when the snow is falling at the rate of an inch an hour. Despite this, we look to a hapless rodent to do our bidding.

This year, Groundhog Day was prefaced with a report that Phil’s predictions have not always been accurate. The bad news: Phil is correct only 39% of the time when he predicts a shortened winter season. The good news: Phil is correct only 39% of the time when he predicts a longer, colder winter. It’s another case of the glass being half full/half empty, or, in this case, a glass 39% full or, um, 39% empty.

Fun Phil Fact: Punxsutawney Phil is not a certified meteorologist.

If you think this is confusing, think of poor Phil. One minute he is sleeping off a winter nap in the comfort of his den, and the next minute he is literally dragged out and held aloft to the adoring mantra of thousands of people who obviously have a twisted notion of organized religion. It’s at this point that they demand a weather report. And we do this without offering him so much as a Grand Latte from Starbucks!

He probably thinks these people are seriously effed in the head! Praising a groundhog? Wow, talk about spiritual starvation!

These same people are probably cursing Phil this week as more storms hit the northeast. A few more aggressive individuals may go a bit further than cursing out Phil, and may fantasize what they might do if they happen to ever meet our bewildered beast. I dare say that these same people might peruse the Internet for cooking recipes which require the meat of a woodchuck or whistlepig. The bad news for Phil: there is no shortage of groundhog recipes on the Internet.

You can stew him, slow cook him or shred him into bite size chunks mixed with teriyaki sauce. The recipes all start - or so my friends tell me - with the same instructions: skin and soak the meat in a brine/vinegar solution for a few hours, or, even better, overnight. This points up the fact that groundhog meat is not marketed by any of our supermarket chains, neatly weighed and packaged between Styrofoam trays and cellophane wrap.

Diplomatically speaking, these recipes would be found under the heading delicacy. Now we all know what the meaning of delicacy is. It is synonymous with what we would stereotypically consider to be good eatin’ in the Ozarks and the more rural parts of West Virginia…or so my friends tell me.

Fortunately for Phil, he has what I believe to be a full time security detail to protect him from what is probably becoming an annual threat to turn him into croquettes. Yes, he will live another year and perchance make our lives miserable or happy next February. In the meantime, we have joker prognosticators who seized upon one weather computer model last weekend and disseminated the prediction that this coming weekend we’ll see a blizzard dumping 24 inches of white crap on the northeast. Accredited meteorologists (are you reading this, Phil?) have discredited that prediction. 

Unfortunately, there is a dearth of recipes on the Internet calling for the meat of Internet jokesters. Pity…

(Thank you for reading. Whistlepig serving tip: the best wine to serve with your woodchuck casserole is Coors!)