Story Prompt: Punxsutawney Phil
2
February 2010
It is groundhog day and Punxsutawney Phil has made his forecast – his shadow chased him back into his hole. Six more weeks of winter. The weatherman was fast to point out that Punxsutawney Phil has only a 39% accuracy rating though.
That was not the most amusing part, however, because the news played in the background as I worked on the computer and I remember something just after Punxsutawney Phil’s forecast about the news gal made a comment regarding something else they were discussing and she said something like: “Everything tastes good fried. Twinkies, groundhogs-… I’m just saying!” She caught a lot of flack from her coworkers, and twas very amusing, but… it made me think about ol’ Punxsutawney Phil and the reactions that people might have to his predictions.
This leads us to today’s prompt. What might reactions be to Punxsutawney Phil and his weather predictions? Might a disgruntled person truly fry up the poor groundhog for predicting more winter? What might a weatherman do if he were recently fired and saw the weather predicting groundhog getting all that attention? There are other weather predicting critters in other towns around the States, what if a small town somewhere decided that their claim to fame might be to prove that Punxsutawney Phil is really from their town and was kidnapped years before?
