Punxsutawney Phil sees local students instead of shadow
Ron Ploucha, member of the Inner Circle, holds Punxsutawney Phil at an assembly at Trinity West Elementary School. Phil came to visit after one of Trinity’s students, Kayla Bonnett, was given the Groundhog Ambassador Award.
Trinity West Elementary School Principal Gloria Nalepka meets Punxsutawney Phil, held by Inner Circle member Ron Ploucha on Thursday at a school assembly. Phil stayed nestled in his enclosure during most of the assembly but came out for several minutes to meet his fans.
Trinity West Elementary School students Olivea Wolfe and Kodi Mann wave their towels cheering for an early spring in a school assembly with Punxsutawney Phil. During the assembly, the students learned about groundhogs and had a chance to see the real Punxsutawney Phil.
Kayla Bonnett, Trinity West Elementary student, poses with Punxsutawney Phil and Inner Circle member Ron Ploucha. Bonnett holds up her certificate after being awarded the Groundhog Ambassador Award.
Kayla Bonnett created her float for Groundhog Day for a school project and won first place. Her grandparents then nominated her to receive the Groundhog Ambassador Award.
Millions watch Punxsutawney Phil’s annual forecast, interpreted by his Groundhog Club’s Inner Circle, to find out if there’s an early spring or six more weeks of winter, but young local fans of Phil got a much closer look at him than the throng that gathers each Feb. 2 on Gobbler’s Knob.
With snow in the forecast, there was a possibility Phil wouldn’t be able to make the 106-mile trip to Washington. But, faced with a potential headline, “Weather Grounds Weather Groundhog,” – not to mention grumbling among a disgruntled group at Trinity West Elementary School – he braved the elements and rolled into the school Thursday in his personalized, clear plastic burrow for the morning.
Phil and his entourage made the trip to welcome Kayla Bonnett, 9, a fourth-grader at Trinity West, as groundhog-dom’s youngest ambassador, also known as one of Phil’s official faithful followers.
“She didn’t know what an ambassador was,” said Kayla’s mom, Tina Mazurik of Washington. “We had to look it up.”
Kayla can certainly define the term now. “It’s someone who promotes something,” she said confidently after a groundhog-palooza in her school gym with none other than Phil sharing her spotlight as handler Ron Ploucha bestowed the ambassadorship, replete with plastic crown bearing Phil’s countenance, on the girl who really likes groundhogs.
So how does a child from the southwest corner of the state come to the attention of a Groundhog Club in Jefferson County?
Earlier this school year, Kayla crafted a wintry Groundhog Day display for a school parade, never thinking she’d get to meet the guys pictured on the float, Ploucha and Phil. Other kids chose to illustrate their projects about an important place, symbol or event with scenes familiar to students: Kennywood Park or the Pittsburgh bridges.
Kayla did her best to spread the word about Punxsutawney and its Most Famous Groundhog in Pennsylvania, whom she’s visited at his library lair along with Phyllis and their phamily. Pupils peppered her with so many questions she had to research them during her Christmas vacation. She also baked groundhog cookies for classmates and paraded her snowy, Punxsy-centric scene around the school, which her classmates voted “most colorful.”
Kayla’s grandparents, Carol and Ed Bonnett of Punxsutawney, nominated her as a groundhog ambassador and members of the Groundhog Club concurred.
She would have been recognized as an ambassador at the annual Groundhog Club banquet, but she was unable to make the trip, Feb. 1 and 2 being school days and all, so her school principal, Gloria Nalepka, and the PTA invited Phil and his humans to Trinity West.
On Thursday, the students learned baby groundhogs are born in April. If a woodchuck makes a home in your wood pile, he or she requires only morning dew as a water source. Groundhogs have only four teeth, two uppers and two lowers. You know those big gloves the groundhog handler wears the morning of Feb. 2? Those are only the outer pair. Underneath, his hands are protected by chain mail.
Ploucha, a former high school math teacher, was aware of the brouhaha that erupted this past Groundhog Day between an indignant state Rep. Peter J. Daley, D-California, and the Weather Channel’s Stephanie Abrams, who called Punxsutawney Phil a rodent. Daley demanded a public apology despite the fact biologists classify the groundhog’s species as Marmota and their order is, after all, Rodentia.
Ploucha said he prefers the term “marmot. I don’t like the name rodent because it puts them in the class of rats and so on. When you get to know Phil, he’s anything but a rodent. He’s got a personality all his own.”
But Ploucha, unlike Daley, wasn’t about to take on the Weather Channel, calling the folks there “really good. They come up for Groundhog Day all the time. They know it’s all in fun. It gives them a break from the tediousness of forecasting gloom and doom all the time. It’s the same as last year, when the police chief in New Hampshire wanted to indict Phil” because he predicted six more weeks of Siberian-style weather during a year when New Englanders were screaming, “Enough, already!”
The Merrimack police chief didn’t know Ploucha’s daughter lived in his town until Phil’s handler arrived in person to answer the charges on the prognosticator’s behalf. Phil didn’t make that trip – Ploucha is specially permitted by the state Department of Agriculture, and it’s a hassle to cross state lines with a wild animal.
“We had a lot of fun with it,” Ploucha said. “It’s all in fun.”
Trinity West students surely went back to class Thursday with the same feeling after their visit with one warm, fuzzy – and most famous – whistle pig,