We honor the groundhog one day each year

By Dr. Stanley Watson

PICAYUNE — We honor the groundhog one day each year

I like to follow the special days on the calendar but always wondered about Groundhog Day. Why would a hairy little critter be so honored as to have a special day in which the city officials in formal dress greet him as he emerges from his winter hibernation?

Well, this year I investigated the reason for all the fuss. My first step was to plug into a great source of information on animals, the College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University. Our youngest grandson had called our attention to the veterinary program of Cornell when he was there for his pre-med studies and Johnie and I were feeding swarms of hummingbirds of all kinds. Cornell was a rich source of information on hummers and I hoped they could help me out on groundhog lore.

I learned that the Woodchuck and groundhog are common terms for the same animal, a rodent with the scientific name of Marmota monax. Closely kin to squirrels, they can actually climb trees and also swim.

Groundhogs, for many years, have been honored on Groundhog Day on February 2 — about halfway between the winter solstice in December and the vernal equinox in the spring. It’s just about the time many groundhogs end their hibernation.

The earliest American reference to Groundhog Day can be found at the Pennsylvania Dutch Folklore Center at Franklin and Marshall College:

February 4, 1841 — from Morgantown, Berks County (Pennsylvania) storekeeper James Morris’ diary: “Last Tuesday, the 2nd, was Candlemas Day, the day on which, according to the Germans, the Groundhog peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as the weather is to be moderate.”

Traditionally the Germans had always watched a badger for the shadow. In Pennsylvania, the groundhog was selected as a perfect replacement.

Pennsylvania’s official celebration of Groundhog Day began on February 2nd, 1886 with a proclamation in The Punxsutawney Spirit by the newspaper’s editor, Clymer Freas, who wrote, “Today is groundhog day and up to the time of going to press the beast has not seen its shadow.”

The groundhog was given the name “Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators, and Weather Prophet Extraordinary’’ and his hometown thus called the “Weather Capital of the World.’’

His debut performance: no shadow — early Spring. The legendary first trip to Gobbler’s Knob was made the following year at Punxsutawney for the arrival of Phil from his winter hibernation.

Groundhog fur was never in vogue, partly because it is not particularly thick and warm, and because the fur’s grizzled grey-brown appearance is more appealing to others of their species than to people. Groundhog hairs are used for tying trout flies and early American Indians used sturdy woodchuck hides for the soles of their moccasins.

The woodchuck was at the center of one tribe’s creation story. The Delaware Indians believed their forebears began life as animals in “Mother Earth” and emerged centuries later to hunt and live as men. In 1723, the Delaware Indians settled Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania as a campsite halfway between the Allegheny and the Susquehanna Rivers.

The name Punxsutawney comes from the Indian name for the location “ponksad-uteney” which means “the town of the sand flies.”

The name woodchuck comes from the Indian legend of “Wojak,the groundhog” considered by them to be their ancestral grandfather.

Roger Segelken of Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, tells us that the groundhog is valued at Cornell for its indispensable contributions to the study of liver disease in humans. For more than 15 years, animals born at the world’s only scientific source of disease-free woodchucks have led researchers to discoveries in the treatment and prevention of hepatitis B infection and the liver cancer it can cause. Disease processes that take 30 to 40 years in humans occur in three to four years in woodchucks.

Dr. Bud C. Tennant, Professor of Comparative Medicine who heads the woodchuck research project explains, “A percentage of the wild woodchuck population in the United States is infected with a virus very similar to HBV, the human hepatitis B virus. Humans don’t get hepatitis from woodchucks with WHV, the woodchuck hepatitis virus, but the virus and its effect on their liver is similar enough to make the woodchuck the best system we have for studying viral hepatitis in humans.”

An estimated 250 to 300 million people, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, are carriers of HBV, and about 40 percent of those infected will develop chronic liver damage or cancer. Many babies are born infected with the virus in those regions of the world and they carry the infection throughout their lives.

The Cornell groundhogs are also great for predicting weather. Even the most celebrated of wild groundhogs are frequently wrong but not Shadow, the Cornell woodchuck colony mascot, and here is why.

“By the time Shadow wakes up and comes out of her nest box on February 2, the indoor lights are on,” Tennant explained. “Not surprisingly, she always sees her shadow and we’re never surprised if spring is months away. After all, this is Ithaca and upstate New York.”