Punxsutawney Groundhog Club asks for help naming Phil's babies
PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. (KDKA) -- Punxsutawney Phil is a dad for the first time, and the Groundhog Club says he needs help figuring out what to name his twins.
The Groundhog Club Inner Circle has set up name suggestion boxes around Punxsutawney, allowing visitors to drop in their ideas until May 9.
"We are allowing the community of Punxsutawney and anyone who visits us in the next few days to help by giving us your names for these little cuties," the Inner Circle wrote on Facebook.
The names will be announced, fittingly, on May 12, which is Mother's Day.
Phil and his "wife" Phyllis welcomed the two little bundles of joy in March, about a month after Phil's big prediction. According to legend, if Phil emerges from Gobbler's Knob on Feb. 2 and sees his shadow, we have six more weeks of winter, but if there is no shadow, we get an early spring.
Tom Dunkel, the president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club Inner Circle, told KDKA-TV that no one even knew Phyllis was pregnant. They found the babies when someone went to feed the groundhogs.
It's the first time the Groundhog Club has had babies. Dunkel, whose cane allows him to speak "Groundhogese," said Phil was"besides himself" after the birth of his children.
"He's 138 years old and never had a child so he picked late in life to start a family," Dunkel said. The Inner Circle maintains Phil is over a century old and stays young by drinking the "elixir of life" every summer.
Whatever names the babies end up with, Dunkel said they'll be staying out of the family business. There's one Santa Claus, one Easter Bunny and one Punxsutawney Phil.
