West Virginia State Wildlife Center's official weather prognosticator, French
Creek Freddie, is poised to forecast the onset of spring at 10 a.m. Feb. 2. French Creek Freddie has undertaken
his annual ritual at the West Virginia State Wildlife Center since 1978.
"Celebrating
Groundhog Day at the Wildlife
Center has become a very popular event," Wildlife Center biologist Gene Thorn stated in a release.
"This year we're hoping for a huge crowd to help us celebrate and witness
Freddie's annual prediction because the event falls on Saturday when the kids
are out of school."
In addition to the
pageantry of seeing if Freddie sees his shadow, visitors can listen to poems
and songs, enjoy refreshments and compete in various wood chuckin' contests.
According to
tradition rooted in early European legend, Groundhog Day stems from similar
beliefs associated with Candlemas Day. For centuries, early Christian clergy would
bless candles and distribute them to the people. During the conquest of the
northern country, Roman legions supposedly brought this tradition to the
Germans, who concluded that if the sun made an appearance on Candlemas Day, the
hedgehog would cast a shadow, thus predicting six more weeks of bad weather.
The Germans would recite: For as the sun shines on Candlemas Day, so far will
the snow swirl until the May.
Early German
settlers in the New
World found
another burrowing animal, the woodchuck or groundhog, to be more plentiful then
the hedgehog. Thus, the groundhog replaced the hedgehog as the traditional
"wise animal" in North
America.
Locally, people
remember retired West Virginia Wildlife Center biologist Bill Vanscoy for his annual
tete-a-tete with French Creek Freddie, the Wildlife Center's resident weather-prognosticating
groundhog. Vanscoy in fact launched Freddie's legend in 1978.
The news release
quotes Vanscoy, "A newspaper reporter who had come to the Game Farm (now the Wildlife Center) called me the day before Groundhog Day one
year and asked if we had a groundhog, and if it had seen its shadow. I don't
remember what I told him, but it was whatever was appropriate to the weather we
were having. Anyway , he asked me what the groundhog's name was. I don't know
what possessed me to do it, but I skipped the usual lecture on why we don't
name animals and said his name was French Creek Freddie.
"It went out on the
Associated Press wire, and soon we were getting calls from all over the
country. Every year now, people from newspapers and TV stations come out on
Groundhog Day and get a groundhog out of its den for the cameras. It's harmless
fun, and it comes at a time of the year that people need some cheering up."
The next Wildlife Center biologist, Rob Silvester, continued the
tradition and recalls that people from the region remembered seeing him on TV
with French Creek Freddie. "I would be walking in the mall in Fairmont and some guy would come up to me and say he
saw me on TV on Groundhog Day."
Current
Wildlife Center biologist Thorn has experienced the same
thing as he carries on the tradition each year. He has expanded the ceremony
into a lesson on the history of Groundhog Day – reading poems sand leading
songs, including one he wrote himself, "The French Creek Freddie Song," sung to
the tune of the "Mickey Mouse March" that many in the crowd grew up with.
There are
refreshments, games and activity sheets for the kids. This year a wood chuckin'
contest will take place. The local community gets involved, and every year the
local Lion's Club puts on a pancake and "ground-hog" sausage feed at the Rock
Cave Volunteer Fire Department.
For information,
contact the center at 304-924-6211 or visit the DNR's web page at www.wvdnr.gov.
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