“Oh sure,” exclaimed Phil, “I used to be famous.” We caught up with the former Punxsutawney Phil in his retirement home in The Villages just north of Orlando for his take on this year’s winter and to learn a little about his life. “My given name is Eugene and I’m originally from Scranton. I changed it to Phil and moved to Punxsutawney when I decided to get into weather forecasting.”
“Most people don’t know that I starred in the movie ‘Groundhog Day’ with Bill Murray,” Phil explained. “Bill and I were tight. Oh the fun we had on and off the set. We even played a couple of rounds of golf. He’s a lot of fun to play a round with if you can tolerate him yelling “Cinderella story” every time he hits the ball. After the movie was such a hit they decided to fire me and go with a younger, more handsome Phil. Heck, Murray won’t even return my calls anymore. What an ingrate.”
“Nobody cares that in 1978 I successfully called for six more weeks of winter. Sure enough, the northeast got hit with a blizzard that dumped 30 inches of snow in Boston with two-story drifts, impassable roads and week-long school closings. It was hailed as one of the top weather events in the 20th century. Did I get any credit for that? Nope! Instead I get dumped for a groundhog that they say looks like Chris Hemsworth.”
“I used to have it all,” Phil reminisced. “All the food I wanted, humans at my beck and call, females chasing me wherever I went. But now, nothing. I just sit here in my tiny retirement home here in The Villages trying not to get run over by some golf cart driving octogenarian. Heck, even my wife left me for some two-bit weatherman on Channel 57.”
“Groundhog weather prognosticating used to mean something,” said Phil. “Farmers counted on us to know how much winter weather was remaining. But now you humans have your fancy satellites and radar. Groundhog Day is nothing but a scam perpetrated by The Weather Channel to boost ratings,” Phil exclaimed.
“You want my prediction for this year’s winter? It’s central Florida. It’ll be the same as every year. We’ll have a few days where it’ll get in the 30s and people will complain that it’s too cold. Then it’ll warm up and we’ll all mock our friends and relatives that still live up north. Duh, what do you expect?”
To paraphrase Bill Murray in the movie ‘Groundhog Day’, this is one time where print fails to capture the true excitement of a bitter large squirrel predicting the weather.
Disclaimer: The Scallion is a vain attempt at humor and is complete fiction, satire, or rubbish if you prefer. Any resemblance to any person or rodent either living or dead is completely coincidental… So there!
If you’ve made it this far down this piece of literary banality, I assume you’re either really bored or trapped on your toilet without your smart phone… Good luck with that.
