A Fat Groundhog
A post on the groundhog, in honor of our most under-celebrated holiday.
(I didn’t get the day off from work.)
This curious little holiday inspired a search for trivia. Such as, did you know that Groundhog Day derives from the celebration of Imbolc, the traditional Gaelic Irish nameday for the first day of Spring? I didn’t even know that a groundhog is the same thing as a woodchuck, and I certainly didn’t know that woodchuck comes from the Algonquin name for the animal ‘wuchak,’ and not from the fact that it likes to gnaw on wood. (It doesn’t. That’s a beaver.)
I could go on, and I will go on.
Famous Groundhogs
We all know about Punxsutawney Phil, who was immortalized in the Bill Murray film “Groundhog Day.” But there’s also Wiarton Willie, an albino groundhog that lived to age 22 (d. 1999), and was immortalized as a beloved statue in his hometown: Wiarton, Ontario. There’s General Beauregard Lee, a southern gentleman groundhog, who has received honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Georgia AND Georgia State University.
There’s also a famous groundhog from Staten Island with the (lame) name Staten Island Chuck. He just predicted an early spring while New York City is reeling from a record-breaking winter snowfall. Uh-huh.
Groundhog Poetry
Groundhogs have been inspiring poets for centuries. Here’s a strangely gory, but moving, and, somehow, epic ode by American poet Richard Ghormley Eberhardt.
THE GROUNDHOG
~
In June, amid the golden fields,
I saw a groundhog lying dead.
Dead lay he; my senses shook,
And mind outshot our naked frailty.
~
There lowly in the vigorous summer
His form began its senseless change,
And made my senses waver dim
Seeing nature ferocious in him.
~
Inspecting close maggots’ might
And seething cauldron of his being,
Half with loathing, half with a strange love,
I poked him with an angry stick.
~
The fever arose, became a flame
And Vigour circumscribed the skies,
Immense energy in the sun,
And through my frame a sunless trembling.
~
My stick had done nor good nor harm.
Then stood I silent in the day
Watching the object, as before;
And kept my reverence for knowledge
~
Trying for control, to be still,
To quell the passion of the blood;
Until I had bent down on my knees
Praying for joy in the sight of decay.
~
And so I left; and I returned
In Autumn strict of eye, to see
The sap gone out of the groundhog,
But the bony sodden hulk remained
~
But the year had lost its meaning,
And in intellectual chains
I lost both love and loathing,
Mured up in the wall of wisdom.
~
Another summer took the fields again
Massive and burning, full of life,
But when I chanced upon the spot
There was only a little hair left,
~
And bones bleaching in the sunlight
Beautiful as architecture;
I watched them like a geometer,
And cut a walking stick from a birch.
~
It has been three years, now.
There is no sign of the groundhog.
I stood there in the whirling summer,
My hand capped a withered heart,
~
And thought of China and of Greece,
Of Alexander in his tent;
Of Montaigne in his tower,
Of Saint Theresa in her wild lament.
Groundhog websites
Yes, there’s a site called Groundhog Day Literature, that says its sponsored by the “International Rodent Society.” There’s some middling lyrics—noted, instructionally: “to be recited or sung with gusto!”—-and a Groundhog Day haiku.
