Brookville Bruce?

Being a native of Punxsutawney, PA, it's only natural that I often catch grief from people because our community happens to be the home of a specially-abled groundhog with weather forecasting abilities.

Of course those of us from Punxsutawney see nothing unusual about this; we've been celebrating Punxsutawney Phil's amazing abilities for well over a century now.

Not only that, but we have seen numerous pretenders crop up over the years.  There are groundhogs in Atlanta, GA, Dunkirk, NY, Quarryville, PA, and many others who have tried to latch onto Phil's popularity by claiming that their own groundhogs have these special powers.

Naturally, they do not.  Phil is the only groundhog with time-tested, accurate weather forecasting abilities.

Even closer to home we have had trouble with people trying to come up with their own ripoff animal prognosticators.  In the very nearby community of Big Run, for example, there's a guy who claims that his backyard frogs can predict the start of spring.  They have a banquet and everything (the townspeople have a banquet, not the frogs.  At least as far as I'm aware).

And now, just within the past couple days, we seem to have another potential fly in the ointment.  Not a literal fly, although I'm sure someone will come up with a weather forecasting fly soon enough.

Some idiot from Brookville (about 20 miles north of Punxsutawney) was caught trying to revive a road kill possum last Thursday.  There can only be a couple logical explanations for such a thing.  A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article suggests that alcohol may be to blame.  Well, duh... if you're going to try to give mouth-to-mouth to a possum, one would think that alcohol may be a necessity, indeed.

I would suggest that the suspect, Donald Wolfe, had reason to believe that this was a weather forecasting possum, and he just wanted to get in on the action.  I mean, let's face it... Brookville doesn't have a whole lot going for it, so why not recruit a weather forecasting possum to boost its popularity.  They could call it "Brookville Bruce," and have a special event for it every year so it could announce its forecast to the world.

It's only a matter of time before DuBois, Indiana and yes, even Sligo, try to hone in on the action.