National Post (National Edition)
`SWEET DEATH, FREE ME FROM THIS CHARADE'
Only hours before Val-d'Espoir, Que., was to hold their annual Groundhog Day celebration, village officials noticed that their groundhog — Fred la Marmotte — was dead. Strangely, this is the second year in a row that such a thing has happened. Last year, Groundhog Day festivities needed to be cancelled in Milltown, N.J., after their groundhog (Milltown Mel) also dropped dead with hours to go before his forecast. Clearly, the groundhogs are trying to tell us something. In Dear Diary, National Post satirically re-imagines a week in the life of a newsmaker. This week, Tristin Hopper takes a journey inside the thoughts of Fred la Marmotte.
MONDAY
Heavy lies the burden upon this most unusual of oracles. While I am but a mere rodent, a cruel deity has endowed me with terrifying powers of forecast. When I but close my eyes, I witness an interminable landscape of miseries that are to come: Flood, fire, war, destruction. But lo! They treat me as a mere prophet of weather! Three years past, I warned my keepers of the coming of a terrible plague. “Protect your aged! Seal your frontiers!” I pleaded, but to no avail. “Early spring!” the top-hatted man declared. The fools. The stupid, stupid fools.
TUESDAY
What tidings do I foresee for the coming moons? My brain aches with the visions before me: Economic ruin. Political dysfunction. Runaway crime. Internecine conflict. Perpetual Prince Harry interviews. And yes; six more weeks of bitter, bitter cold. Wouldst they only heed my warnings, I could prevent it all!
WEDNESDAY
O vile fate, let this life be ended. Draw the curtain on this farcical existence. What miserable invention of Hell would imbue a being with prophecy and deny him even the most basic powers of communication? I scratch, I paw, I squirm; and no heed is taken. Is it any wonder that my only known vocalization is a blood-curdling scream?
This season, I fear the strain is too great. I cannot bear another year of being presented to an audience of naifs who know not that their salvation lies entombed in a mute rodent. Oh, sweet death, claim me before sunup …
THURSDAY
And so I am dead. Mere hours before my annual humiliation, my keepers found naught but a corpse: A lifeless, staring mass mocking their community's singular claim to fame. Drink it in, Val-d'Espoir, the one thing that put your village on the map is now 13 pounds of rigor mortised flesh, minus the weight of one tormented soul.
FRIDAY
I was afforded but one dignity in my afflicted existence: My keepers acknowledged my mortality. It is not their typical way. Better to swap out each dead groundhog with a fresh replacement to maintain the fiction of immortality. Or, at least, to avoid acknowledging to their young offspring that all existence is ultimately fleeting. In this, they deny us our individuality. Punxsutawney Phil, Shubenacadie Sam, Wiarton Willie; these are all but titles, and the captive beings picked to represent them are but unwilling actors who know their ultimate fate to be an unmarked grave or the bowels of an incinerator. So, alas, only in death could I truly register my protest against this unremitting charade.