Anyone for groundhog stew?

Phil saw his shadow this morning, so six more weeks of winter it is. Astronomically speaking, we were in for 6 weeks and 5 days more of this crap regardless of what the marmota had to say on the subject. A warming trend in the weather has put me in better humor about the whole depths of winter thing, so Phil has lucked out. Shadow or not, I don't think we'll have to see whether the magic elixir of groundhog immortality (see bullet point 4) also protects him against meat cleavers.

It's not all frivolous weather prognostication among the marmota, though. Most groundhogs are still hibernating, as a good groundhog ought to be, and a few of those hibernating woodchucks are working to benefit mammals as a whole, without having to rouse at the crack of dawn or dash our hopes for an early end to winter. Groundhogs in a Colorado research lab are helping the human researchers look at both the potential impacts of climate change and possible mechanisms to fight human obesity.