Kerri went to Wiarton for Groundhog Day.
It actually looked like this.
It was difficult to see one of Wiarton’s major landmarks, the giant ugly upholstered chair.
That is a lot of snow.
And ice.
Armies of people were tasked with clearing the roads and excavating paths to all of Willie’s monuments so that the festival could go on.
Groundhog day starts bright and early with fireworks to wake Willie up.
Kerri was not awake yet, so the camera wasn’t set up properly, so there are no good pictures.
Then the people gather in front of the stage.
The town criers make a lot of noise to ensure Willie is fully awake.
Followed by a barrage of bad puns so cringeworthy that Willie is eventually forced out of bed to make them stop.
Then Willie and the Mayor of the Land and of the Marmot are brought to the stage.
She leans down to converse with him in Groundhogese.
Then the mayor deliberates with the rest of the shadow cabinet. Why deliberation is necessary to translate the groundhog’s prediction is a bit of a mystery.
This year’s deliberations were subject to interference by a politician that was not on the official shadow cabinet. Any inaccuracies in this year’s predictions can surely be blamed on this intrusion. (That’s right, I’m blaming Ford for the weather. The current weather. Not the future climate he’s actually going to affect.)
Then the prediction that spring is here is proclaimed across the land.
This proceedure may differ somewhat from what you envisioned. I bet you thought it would at some point involve a groundhog actually seeing his shadow and hiding in his hole. And that did in fact happen in the distant past. You see Willie actually has two forms, which he can change between.
One form is, well, groundhog-shaped. It generally looks like a groundhog, except it’s albino.
He’s kind of cute, in a rodenty-way.
He also has a cute little tail.
This form is conveyed around in a small plastic box to visit with his subjects.
Willie spends his summers in this form in his home in the park. In the winter he hibernates, so his home overflowing with snow doesn’t bother him.
This form also has a memorial, from when it died. This, oddly, didn’t seem to affect his public appearance schedule.
Willie’s other form is about 8 feet tall and bipedal. Every groundhog day Willie changes into this form. In the past he completed the transformation early in the morning. When he was in this form at prediction time, he did in fact look for his shadow and hide in his hole if he saw it. But more recently Willie has become lazy, and does not transform until after prediction time is over. Thus he remains in normal groundhog-shaped form, and must transmit his predictions to the mayor in Groundhogese.
After the prediction many fun snow-based activities take place. Which were a bit strange given the prediction that spring is here. One was snow-snake, where you throw a stick down a slight slope of snow. If you do it just right, it slithers in a way that looks impressively like a snake, all the way down the hill. If you do it like Kerri, the stick goes straight into the gutter.
There were also sleigh rides.
On a real sleigh with no wheels because of all the snow.
But the favourite attraction was the huge hills of snow created by clearing all of the parking lots. Kerri did go to the top and slide down, and it is as fun as it looks.
