The moose, the jackass, or the hat

7/18/2006

The town of Wiarton, rodent lovers everywhere, and a whole whack of other people with too much time on their hands, are in a state of mourning.

Yes, poor little Willie is dead.

One of Canada's best-known and least-accurate weather forecasters, Wiarton Willie, died after an illness last week. The eight-year-old albino marmot is now the second Willie to head to that great burrow in the sky since the controversy of 1999.

When Willie was found dead in his burrow just days before that year's Groundhog Day festivities, his handlers held a funeral. Few could have predicted the backlash when it was discovered the rodent in the casket was an impostor who had died, and had been lovingly stuffed, some time earlier.

The story of Wiarton Willie dates back to 1956, when Wiarton resident Mac McKenzie threw a Groundhog Day party. A Toronto Star reporter arrived looking for the story, and found Mac and his pals getting sauced in the local hotel.

Making sure the scribe wouldn’t go home empty handed, Mac grabbed his wife's fur hat, dug a little burrow in the snow, and made a prediction no one remembers. The picture of Mac and the hat ran in the Feb. 3, 1956, edition of the Toronto Star.

One year later, 50 people arrived for the festival, and the rest (much like Willie right now) is history.

The problem with using a groundhog as your town mascot, is the animal’s longevity, or lack of it.

In the wild, the groundhog, also known as the woodchuck, whistle-pig or ball-nibbler, lives an average of six years. That average spikes as high as eight years or more for an animal kept in captivity.

The solution? Find a new animal to make your predictions that will stick around longer than eight years. The moose, a Canadian favourite, will live an average of 12 years in the wild, or 25 in captivity.

The grizzly bear and baboon both check in at 20 years in the wild, and around 50 years in captivity.

A hippo can get as old as 40, even 60, in a zoo.

A chimpanzee lives at least that long, and they don’t seem to mind dressing up either. Perhaps the most fitting choice for the festival would be the jackass, who can get close to 50 with proper care.

When it comes to animal longevity, the tortoise is the undisputed king. Specimens routinely live in excess of 100 years, and one given to the King of Tonga reportedly lasted over 150 years.

Wiarton might even consider using bacteria as the town’s new calling card. Years ago, a bacteria specimen, found alive in mud at the bottom of Windermere Lake in northern England, was dated at around 1,500-years-old, give or take a few.

The simplest solution would be to find that old fur hat Mac stuck in the snow—because, let’s face it, no one really takes it all that seriously anyway.