Perhaps all those many years ago, back when the whole Punxsutawney Phil tradition first began, no one could have predicted the existence of an organization like PETA (a.k.a. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). An organization that was established far-ish away from Punxsutawney Phil’s “cush” Pennsylvania environs. Approximately ninety-four years after the first prediction made by good ol’ Phil in 1886. Indeed, little did shy, introverted Phil (/the numerous descendants that would keep playing the part of “Phil”) and his various groundhog brothers in arms know, it was going to take that long for a group of the human variety to stand up for “their kind.” Granted, it took still forty-five more years after PETA’s founding in Rockville, Maryland for said group to put it together that they should have been advocating for groundhogs’ rights all along.

But it’s entirely possible that the groundhog in general and Punxsutawney Phil in particular was a lower priority on PETA’s list of animals to help defend and petition for. After all, humanity is usually cruelest to the “Big Two” of animal species: dogs and cats. Then, of course, there was the endless allure of attacking rich ladies wearing fur coats (authentic or otherwise) with buckets of red paint (*cough cough* Joan Rivers and Anna Wintour). In fact, the group’s whole red paint “shtick” became such a trope in the high fashion world that the Sex and the City movie offers up a scene of Samantha Jones being accosted by some PETA-inspired “red painters” while wearing a white fur coat and walking out of a Fashion Week show.

Eventually, they got around to Pennsylvania—and what it represents: groundhog (and voter) suppression. Compared to “antics” past, the suggestion to the president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club (henceforth to be referred to as Groundhog Club President) was delivered by PETA with a much gentler touch than usual, with the organization instead opting to publish a strongly-worded press release that merely advised, sans violence or “shock tactics,” a “weather reveal” cake (you know, a riff on the gender reveal cakes that have become so popular in the years since Jenna Karvunidis made “gender revealing,” like, a “whole thing”—often to the detriment of the environment). This in lieu of wielding a groundhog as a means to “reveal” the weather prediction vis-à-vis early spring or long winter.

After all, trotting out a creature that, per PETA, prefers to “actively avoid humans” is pretty dastardly. In other words, they’re introverts by nature (which is why they like to burrow into the ground where they can’t be bothered). Yet, as PETA added, “year after year, Phil is transported to Gobbler’s Knob, whisked on stage, and subjected to a noisy announcer, screaming crowds and flashing lights against all his natural instincts.” The “whisked” being italicized to play up the whole “cake forecasting” idea.

Alas, as the founder (henceforth to be referred to as Founder) of PETA suddenly realized, “Poor Phil is denied all of that for a tired old gimmick.” Which is why “PETA is urging The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club to sprinkle some happiness into Phil’s life by retiring him and giving Groundhog Day a much-needed ‘cake makeover.’” As one Punxsutawney resident, Jill Wendell, read this news, she couldn’t help but nearly spit out her coffee. Because while, sure, Groundhog Day maybe needed a makeover, it certainly wasn’t a cake-based one. That’s what Jill thought anyway, which was really saying something since she was among the few bakeries specializing in cakes that even existed in town. Even “few” seemed like too strong a word. For it was really just her bakery, Cakey Breaky Heart, and another woman named Lenora’s—who had the total lack of originality to call her bakery Lenora’s. Other than that, her big competition was the Walmart Bakery out on US-119. It was the latter she had to worry about, competition-wise, more than the former.

In any case, although some might have assumed a woman in Jill’s line of work would be all about helping this particular PETA campaign (despite having shown little previous interest in the well-being of animals), she was, in truth, rather horrified by it. Who the fuck was PETA to intervene in local affairs? Affairs that had nothing to do with them or their little “courting controversy” attempts at “making a difference.” It was one thing to harass those big city folk up in New York, but it was quite another to come for the time-honored tradition of a small town. A time-honored tradition that was, in fact, the backbone of the town’s economy. How dare Founder, with her highfalutin ideas of “decency,” try to attack Groundhog Club President and those that were still American enough to support G-Day.

Jill hemmed and hawed to herself as she tottered around the kitchen, making another pot of coffee. She went back to her laptop to read the press release that one of the major news sites had reprinted. Obviously, the local rag, The Punxsutawney Spirit, had chosen to gloss over the sensationalized hullaballoo altogether, sticking with rightfully more wholesome headlines like, “This year’s Philettes ready to warm up Groundhog Day crowd” and “Groundhog King and Queen Crowned at Mulberry.” Were they to address the rising backlash against Groundhog Day, it would be like some sort of admission of wrongdoing. That was Jill’s understanding, and something she agreed with. Oh hell, she thought, it’s not like they’re whackin’ Phil over the head and eatin’ him for lunch like a goddamn Thanksgiving turkey. She guessed that PETA had grown tired of their anti-Thanksgiving campaigns for a while and decided Groundhog Day was the “thing” to direct their focus on.

To make sure the open letter to Groundhog Club President was real, she went to the actual PETA website to confirm the contents of the missive. What she immediately noticed, being a stickler for spelling and grammar, was the typo in the sentence, “It would be as least as accurate as asking a groundhog what to expect in a way that doesn’t even reflect his nature.” In her mind, she crossed out the first “as” and replaced it with the correct “at.” Good Lord, don’t they know that the first step to being taken seriously is pristine spelling and grammar?

While she was lurking on their site, she also saw that, among the many sentiments contained within the organization’s “tagline,” what popped out most was the phrase: “Animals are not ours to use for entertainment.” Jill knew, on some level, that, yes, of course, Phil was being used for entertainment. Whored out for the sake of a spectacle that had become so grand over the years that they had even made a movie called Groundhog Day. And sure, Jill never liked that annoying Bill Murray and the movie hadn’t even been shot in Punxsutawney (they used Woodstock, Illinois as the location—of all the insults!), but it was still a testament to the cultural phenomenon that Groundhog Day had become. A uniquely American tradition.

And trying to get rid of it with some poor excuse of a substitute like gender reveal cake was an absolute travesty to Jill and everyone else in Punxsutawney. Besides, with the way all those pinko liberal types got offended by everything, couldn’t it somehow be deemed “offensive” that they should suggest blue to mean six more weeks of winter and pink to mean an early spring? The way Jill interpreted it from the perspective of one of those skewed-minded liberals was that you could say assigning pink to spring was sexist because it associated a “frilly, light” season with the female, while assigning blue to a longer winter played up the stereotype of men as strong, cold and merciless. A not untrue stereotype, Jill had to admit to herself before pushing such “dangerous thinking” aside.

As Jill sipped her newly-poured coffee out of her groundhog-shaped mug, she began to realize that the entire debacle seemed, more and more, like a matter that ought to be presented to the current president (henceforth to be referred to as “President”). Now there was a man who believed in preserving traditional American values. They could call him a white supremacist Nazi all they wanted, but he got things done, didn’t he? And this, well, this was a cause that was definitely up his alley. Jill thus took the opportunity to tweet (or whatever they were calling a tweet now), on the platform owned by the president’s righthand man, “Dear Mr. President, please save Groundhog Day from left-wing madness!!” and then followed that line with a link to one of the articles about PETA’s latest “gimmick.”

Never in her wildest imagination did she believe that “President” would not only see her tweet, but also retweet it with a response of his own, declaring that he would be there on Groundhog Day to make a point about what a sacred and important tradition it was, particularly to the “fine true Americans” living in the Punxsutawney and Gobbler’s Knob areas (because, yes, these “fine true Americans” were happy to ignore how innuendo-laden “Gobbler’s Knob” sounds).

Upon touching down in Punxsutawney, it didn’t take long for President to be welcomed with open arms by the residents in full support of keeping Phil on for the “job of a lifetime” (though most humans would argue that any “job of a lifetime” ought to at least pay pretty well). But while the residents might have been enthusiastic about seeing their nefarious leader, Phil appeared to sense some dark plot afoot. Although he’d been accommodating enough to fuckheads like Jill all these years, there was something in particular about President that really made his hair bristle. He had to get out, had to flee from this crowd of gaping exploiters. Squirming and writhing as he never had before out of the hands of Groundhog Club President, Phil scurried as fast as he could into an area that they couldn’t reach him, diving into another burrow that had already been dug by a fellow groundhog (an angel of a groundhog, whoever he or she was).

Which is how PETA’s letter, rather than being just a suggestion, would turn out to be a prophecy: “If approached in his natural habitat, he would run away in fear, not volunteer to live year-round in captivity, unable to do anything that’s natural and important to him like hibernate or burrow—just to be a town’s once-a-year fake meteorologist.” On the plus side for Jill, however, now she gets to be the town’s once-a-year fake meteorologist by capitulating to a goddamn “weather reveal” cake. At least until the next “Phil” could be properly vetted.