Sand Mountain Sam the opossum speaks out against Punxsutawney Phil

Transcribed by Naomi Farkas

Illustration by Frances Mcdowell, Layout Assistant

Every year, like clockwork, folks across the United States and beyond tune in to watch an ugly groundhog (who isn’t even a licensed meteorologist!) predict how long the winter will be. And I am sick of it. On that exact same day, I emerged from my whiskey barrel (way cooler than a stupid hole), and gave my prognosis– an early spring. But did anyone care? No!

An early spring is objectively better than six more weeks of winter, but because Puxsutawney Phil is a charismatic fauna with a whole movie named after him, he gets all the credit. February 2 is literally called Groundhog Day. Not Opossum Day, not Animals Predicting the Weather day. Groundhog Day.

My colleagues and I have had it up to here being overshadowed by Phil’s shadow. Did you know that in Concord, Ohio, an orange cat named Casmir eats a plate of pierogis to predict the coming winter weather? Down in North Carolina, an albino squirrel named Pisgah Piper not only predicts the weather but also predicts the winner of the Super Bowl. (Her pick was the Seattle Seahawks, by the way. And she was right on the money!) Not to mention Cluxatawney Henrietta in New York, a chicken who cosigned my prediction of any early spring.

But do we get any credit for our brilliant advances in animal meteorology? No! 

Fuck Puxsutawney Phil. I hope that Marmit rots in the fiery annals of hell. I am superior in every single way, and yet I’ve been left to rot in the dark shadow cast by his shining celebrity. This primadonna pit dweller has hogged the public’s attention and admiration for too long. He lazes about all year but gets paraded around by sycophants in silk top hats just because he’s capable of seeing his own shadow. 

Tonight, I lie in my enclosure. The moon casts pale bluish light down through the tunnel opening of my whiskey barrel, a telescope to the heavens pointed in reverse. The last stragglers of the night are leaving the combination tourist-attraction restaurant and animal enclosure where I live. Now that prediction season is over, I am all but forgotten– just another unthinking animal in the quiet dark. I squint my dark marbled eyes heavenward. The stars are small and impossibly distant.

Puxatawney Phil, I want what you have. I want to be known, to be remembered. I want to live on in name and lineage, to be memorized, stamped into the cellulite of American cinema. I want to be a household name, a legend. A saint. 

I want love. I want warmth.

I want an early spring.