Happy Groundhog Day!

Hey! It’s Roberta. You’ll never guess what happened today. Cowabelle and I were walking through a field on our way home from school when all of a sudden I tripped over something and I heard a loud “Ouch!” When looked down, there was this furry brown guy, crawling around on his hands and knees on the ground like he was looking for something.

When we asked if he could help him look for whatever he lost, he just snapped at us “Help? How can you possibly help find my glasses when you’re the one who kicked them off in the first place?” I explained that I was sorry, that I hadn’t seen him there and he had just seemed to come out of nowhere.

“Nowhere?” he cried, standing up to his full height, which wasn’t very high at all. He was old and grizzled, with bits of grey in his shaggy beard, and he squinted at us with angry eyes. “This nowhere you refer to is my home,” he said, pointing to a hole in the ground we hadn’t noticed before. “and I will have you know that it happens to be a very nice home.”

“You live in the ground?” asked Cowabelle. Um, I think that was the wrong thing to say because he just about freaked. “The ground? The GROUND?” he exclaimed.  “I believe I just finished telling you that I live in my home. It is warm and comfortable, and furnished with some very expensive items from the W Shop, I will have you know. Just because it happens to be located underground is no reason to look down on it. I mean, of course, you literally do have to look down on it, but that’s still no reason to look down on it, if you know what I mean.”

Suddenly, he fell to the ground again, desperately patting around with his paws. “I must find my glasses! I’m late!”

“Late for what?” asked Cowabelle.

“For what? Why, for making my pronouncement, of course!” Just then his paw came across his glasses. He stood up, slammed them on his face and, with a last grunt in our direction, shuffled off. As he reached the edge of the field, he turned to us and said, “Consider yourselves lucky, young ladies. You very nearly ruined Groundhog Day!” and marched away.

Cowabelle and I just stared at each other. We had just met the Groundhog. As in THE Groundhog. And today was Groundhog Day. It was a brush with celebrity! I wondered to Cowabelle what his pronouncement would be in the end. Whether or not there would be six more weeks of winter.

“Whatever.” She answered, shrugging. “He’s kind of a grump.”