Groundhog Day Robot Favored By PETA

How many things are automated in your day?  Your banking, your shopping, your love life?  Well if  PETA has its way, Groundhog Day will soon join them.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals want to save Punxsutawney Phil from the media circus that accompanies his annual prognostication on the length of winter.  PETA says the dawn ceremony, which is attended by as many as 40,000 people, can be traumatizing for the groundhog that would normally be hibernating at this time of year.

“Groundhogs are typically shy animals and are likely to feel fear and stress when they are out of their burrows,” PETA said in a statement. “Each year on Feb 2, Punxsutawney Phil is trotted out to face human handling and hundreds of noisy people, flashing lights and cameras.”  PETA is suggesting that a robot be used instead.

“It’s very ridiculous,” said Bill Deeley, president of the Groundhog Club, which stages the annual event in western Pennsylvania.  Deeley defended his club against PETA’s charges of mistreating Phil, saying he gets an annual medical checkup and lives in a zoo enclosure that is air conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter.

“He’s treated better than the average child in Pennsylvania,” Deeley added.

A robotic groundhog would not be able to communicate its prognostication to the president of the club who claims to be the only person in the world to speak “groundhogese.”

“I couldn’t talk to a robot,” Deeley said. “And the robot couldn’t talk groundhogese.”

But what if it was a robotic groundhog fitted with cutting edge artificial intelligence?  That might soften the blow to losing yet another fine tradition to the modern age.  And as we know, making intelligent robots is always the first step to a better for all of us.