There?s a new prognosticator poking its head out of his burrow along with Punxsutawney Phil ? but this one wears a cowboy hat.
As Easterners prepare to watch the legendary Punxsutawney groundhog sample the spring weather today, out on the prairie another burrower is gaining ground politically. Boulder and Lakewood, Colo. both have declared Feb. 2 Prairie Dog Day in honor of the plains rodent.
Some Easterners are skeptical.
“The prairie dog is very smart, but I don?t know if it can hold a candle to Punxsutawney Phil,” said University of Maryland, Frostburg professor Thomas Palardy, an early childhood education professor and ardent advocate of Groundhog Day observation.
“There must be something there,” he said of the animal?s purported ability to predict how much winter remains. “All these things have some tradition in folklore.”
Meteorologically, the point at which average daytime temperatures reverse their winter slide is right around Groundhog Day, Palardy said, and the date is the midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox.
The tradition was handed down from German immigrants who believed if the animal saw his shadow on this day, it meant a slow end to winter?s cold.
Lauren McCain, a conservationist with the Prairie Dog Coalition, said the plains-dwelling relative of the groundhog could certainly hold its own on intelligence.
“Prairie dogs have the most complex language system of all the animals,” McCain said. “They have separate calls for a person approaching a colony and a person approaching a colony with a gun.”
That?s because many farmers have taken to shooting prairie dogs on sight as sport, both because they eat grazing grasses and due to the risk of cows steppinginto their burrows and breaking a leg.
Prairie dogs have been limited to about 2 percent of their native range, from Canada through Texas, said Lindsey Krank, director of the Prairie Dog Coalition. “They?re a keystone species. That means there are nine species that rely on them for their survival.”
Though some media reports have characterized the prairie dog as a challenger to the groundhog?s traditional office, the Prairie Dog Day movement has received a courteous nod from organizers of the Punxsutawney festival, McCain said. “We can have Groundhog Day in the east and Prairie Dog Day in the West, since we don?t have any groundhogs. And we?ll tip our cowboy hats to Punxsutawney Phil.”
