Punxsutawney Phil has two kids growing up in his 138-year-old shadow
Actor Al Pacino was 83 when he welcomed his fourth child. Rock star Mick Jagger was 73 when he had an eighth. And the meteorologically gifted rodent known as Punxsutawney Phil became a father for the first time at age 138.
Phil and his wife, Phyliss, have brought two baby groundhogs into the world, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club announced on Facebook.
This is the first time that Phil, who is canonically immortal, has procreated. Maybe there’s no biological impulse to expand your bloodline when you’re drinking a magical elixir that keeps you alive forever.
No one even knew Phyliss was expecting.
“We were not prepared for babies, but we are very excited for the babies,” the club’s executive director, Marcy Galando, told The Washington Post.
The idea of a groundhog predicting seasons originally began as a ploy to sell newspapers. Clymer H. Freas, city editor of the Punxsutawney Spirit, was inspired by a group of local groundhog hunters he called the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club. In 1887, he wrote that a weather-sensitive woodchuck would predict climate patterns.
Thousands of people now travel to Punxsutawney, Pennyslvania, every February 2 to see the world-famous woodchuck predict whether Americans will see an early spring or six more weeks of winter. (If you wonder how anyone can understand his message, that’s fair. He announces whether he has seen his shadow by speaking Groundhogese, a language only understood by the current president of the club’s Inner Circle, according to the group.)
A member of the Inner Circle discovered the babies during a feeding last weekend, she said. In a video shared
PUNXSUTAWNEY GROUNDHOG CLUB
by the club, the progeny wiggled around in wood shavings as Mum and Dad kept a close eye just off-screen.
It seems unlikely the children will inherit the family business, because there’s no need for succession when the head of the family never dies.
Phil consumes his elixir each September during the city’s “Phil Phest,” each sip adding seven years to his life. Galando said she did not know the total number of years he has banked.
“We will continue to have one Phil,” she said.
(Without magic, groundhogs usually live three to six years in the wild but have made it to 14 in captivity, according to Tufts University.)
When asked why Phyliss couldn’t take a sip of the elixir, Galando was adamant: “It only works for Phil.”
What is known is that Phil will outlive his wife. And maybe his children. And possibly all living humans. – The Washington Post