Given my spiritual kinship with marmots, I've been asked to weigh in on the Punxsutawney Phil controversy. You've read perhaps that PETA thinks it's time to retire Phil and replace him with a weather robot. Mmmreally.
They argue that even though Phil has it good, he isn't meant to live in captivity...he's a shy, wild creature that wants to be hibernating on schedule, not hanging out in a library to be rolled out once a year and manhandled for the media. Groundhog Day traditionalists counter that Phil lives the life of a king and that life isn't that great in the wild for a marmot these days.
Should a marmot be a "pet"? I'm not sure any animal should be a pet. We're individuals, for goodness sake. "Pet" implies commodity and, somehow, disposability to my mind. Maybe it's just that I've seen what some people do to their pets...takes me back to my youth looking out for some fellow kittens left in a house in Wisconsin. We made it. I know most humans have deep ties to and responsible relationships with animals they call pets, but I've never been fond of the term. Word hockey aside, the point is that marmots are wild. They still have a role in our ecosystem, unlike Felis catus.
Can a marmot live in captivity with regular exposure to humans and be content? Likely, some can. Individual animals might be quite capable of adapting to such a lifestyle. And it's true, it looks like Phil is loved and well-cared for. He may be content.
But I gotta admit, every year, some humans whip out Phil, or one of his captive marmot cousins, and manhandle him a little as they parade around making their point about winter...it makes me shiver.
It seems to me that with all the cool camera and video equipment out there, some creative scientists should be able to scope out a wild marmot hole, plant a camera with a motion detector and, with minimal disruption, wait until the marmot makes a real prediction about the weather. Or maybe, you've got some marmots in a zoo somewhere - maybe even marmots that needed to be rehabilitated and were kept in captivity because they wouldn't survive in the wild - that you could set up a marmot-cam on?
Have you spent time watching a marmot? Here's a little clip from my friends at National Geographic who prove marmot-cams can work.
I'm sure you humans are about as good as predicting the weather by now as most marmots. I'm sure there are marmots out there smarter than most of you, when it comes to weather, but, in any given year, the marmot currently known as Phil might not be that weather-savvy.
A robot is not a marmot, PETA. Marmots are furry, very good at paw hockey, and irreplaceable. But your hearts and minds are in the right place on this one.
Now, if any of these folks had any sense, they'd ask me to predict winter based on my coat depth and shed time. That's what I call science.
