Why go all the way to Pennsylvania for Groundhog Day when the next-best-thing will be hanging with Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans? Well, we hope so, anyway.
The Dupont Festival organization is hosting a Groundhog Day shindig and hopes to have “Potomac Phil,” Punxsutawney Phil’s supposed long-lost relative. But in case they can’t secure an actual groundhog as a co-host with Evans, they’ve got a backup stuffed animal ready to go. Hey, it’s almost the same thing, right?
If Potomac Phil does clear the liability issue (that’s not a joke), the Dupont Festival assures us he’s the real deal. They even got a George Washington University scientist, Robin Bernstein, to verify the lineage.
“We checked Potomac Phil’s Y chromosomes and found them to be an exact match with Punxsutawney Phil’s,” the press release says. “It’s affirmative: they share an ancestral linage, and Potomac Phil seems to have also inherited the internal power of weather prediction.”
No word yet if birth certificate fanatic Donald Trump has retained Bernstein to conduct similar research on President Obama’s lineage.
Residents can find out whether winter will be shorter or longer on Thursday, in Dupont Circle Park at 8:30 a.m.
