Do you believe Staten Island Chuck when he predicts whether there will be six more weeks of winter? Better question: would you trust a Chuck stand in named Charlotte to predict your miserable February and March weather?
In a bombshell story in Thursday’s New York Post, it’s revealed that not only did the groundhog Mayor Bill de Blasio dropped (actually, it squirmed out of his hands) at last year’s Groundhog Day die shortly after the incident, but the animal was NOT who everyone believed it to be.
Staten Island Zoo officials, as the Post put it, “benched” Chuck because he had bitten former Mayor Michael Bloomberg the year before, (bad groundhog!) and instead called upon female groundhog Charlotte to determine the end of the polar vortex.
What, all groundhogs look alike?
According to the Post, the Staten Island Zoo didn’t share that info with anyone, nor did it alert officials when Chuck -er, Charlotte- died. She was found dead on February 9 and “a necropsy determined she died from ‘acute internal injuries,'” the Post reported. “Given the results of the necropsy, the incident appears to have been sudden,” the zoo said in a statement.
Sources also told the Post that her “injuries were consistent with a fall” but a zoo spokesperson said it was unlikely the death was because of the Groundhog Day fumble.
Mayoral spokesperson Phil Walzak told the Post they were “sorry to hear of the loss.”
