Forward of Groundhog Day, PETA made a suggestion to Tom Dunkel, president of The Punxsutawney Groundhog Membership’s Inside Circle, that will allow the group to retire Punxsutawney Phil but nonetheless entice vacationers: Permit a PETA philanthropist to reside in Phil’s unhappy little enclosure and take his place predicting the climate (with not less than as a lot accuracy). If the membership sends Phil and his companion, Phyllis, to a good sanctuary, 36-year-old Amber Canavan from Portland, Oregon, will gladly journey to Pennsylvania to take Phil’s place, reside as he does now within the city library, livestream her monotonous life all 12 months lengthy, and provides an equally unscientific climate forecast on February 2, even sporting a groundhog costume if that’s what the membership needs.
“Punxsutawney Phil didn’t consent to residing in a field in a library, the place he’s denied the chance to hibernate, dig, burrow, discover, or do the rest that issues to a groundhog,” says Canavan.
“However I’d gladly take Phil’s place if it is going to spare him a tedious life punctuated solely by the confusion and terror of being dangled in entrance of a loud crowd yearly.”
Alternatively, PETA provided to ship a telescope and a moon chart as one other, maybe extra correct, strategy to predict the climate. Our earlier presents to ship a persimmon tree, whose seeds are believed by some farmers to point the climate forward, or a speaking, animatronic groundhog nonetheless stand.
As PETA has identified earlier than, it’s time to chuck this drained custom.
Punxsutawney Phil is a groundhog, not a meteorologist.
For greater than century, Punxsutawney has been recognized for this one terrible factor: forcing a shy animal out into the chilly, subjecting him to crowds of individuals, and treating him like an object, all so he could make a very unreliable “prediction.”
Now that The Punxsutawney Groundhog Membership has a fellow mammal keen to be Phil’s alternative, the time has come for him and Phyllis to get pleasure from life at a good sanctuary.
Take Motion for Groundhogs Like Punxsutawney Phil
Groundhogs are shy, delicate people who reside in underground burrows that may span many acres, and utilizing them as props for folklore-based occasions isn’t any trigger for celebration—it’s a merciless type of speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.
Marion, Ohio, radio station WMRN-AM plans to make use of a reside groundhog (often known as Buckeye Chuck) at its Groundhog Day occasion. For the final a number of years, Buckeye Chuck has been equipped by Kokas Exotics—which is just licensed to breed and promote animals, not exhibit them.
Please politely ask WMRN to switch Buckeye Chuck with a artistic various, equivalent to a costumed mascot, and proceed its Groundhog Day custom in a progressive, progressive method that doesn’t hurt animals.
