Groundhog Day Gives Poncho Moment in Sun

Since 1887, Pennsylvania residents have relied on the legendary Punxsutawney Phil to predict the weather. In Canada, Wiarton Willie has been the leading prognosticator for 42 years.

Now, some Orange County children have found their own special groundhog to mark Groundhog Day, even if it’s actually a guinea pig.

His name is Poncho, and 20 kindergarten students at Robinson Elementary School here gathered outside their classroom early Monday and peered into Poncho’s cardboard box covered with green paper grass.

Dressed in a black top hat and bow tie, teacher Mary Karst pulled the chubby brown guinea pig from the box and set him on top. Poncho did not cast a shadow, meaning there’ll be an early spring.

If the guinea pig had seen his shadow, it would have been “six more weeks of winter,” said Cole Laddusaw, 6, the rodent’s official stump warden and handler.

“According to our class, spring is just around the corner,” announced teacher Kathy Keller.

She suggested the children take turns petting the class pet, which was soon lost under a sea of tiny hands. The animal beat out his more robust guinea pig partner, Patches, for the starring role because Poncho looked more like a groundhog, Keller said.

The children also fashioned groundhog puppets out of brown lunch bags, made pop-up groundhog pictures from construction paper, drew groundhogs and memorized a Groundhog Day poem.

According to an old German superstition, bad weather is expected when an animal emerges from hibernation and casts its shadow on the Christian holiday of Candlemas held Feb. 2.

Poncho’s prediction was good news compared to those posted on the Internet Web sites for Punxsutawney Phil and Wiarton Willie. The traditional groundhogs saw their shadows--forecasting six more weeks of winter.

“One hundred times Phil has seen his shadow and 12 times he has not,” Bill Deeley, Punxsutawney Phil’s handler for the last six years, said in a telephone interview. “So [Poncho] has a record he will have to live up to.”