Yesterday was Ground Hog Day all over the United States. Most people who live in Montana know that Montana does not have ground hogs as such. We have whistling marmots and some of them have been known to even predict the weather like their eastern counterparts, the ground hogs.
The question when getting up early on February 2 is will the ground hog or marmot in Montana see his shadow? If it is clear and he sees his shadow, that means six more weeks of winter. If it is cloudy and the marmot does not see his shadow, that means that spring is on its merry way!
Want to see a marmot for yourself? My friends tell me that up the Sucker Creek road a ways is an old milk truck that has been overrun with marmots. Many pictures have made their way to Face Book and other parts of the Social Network of those marmots at the steering wheel and just looking like they are ready to take off and deliver the milk.
Up White Pine Gulch on Clear Creek, in a private and secret canyon, in a cavern dwells Marmaduke Marmot with his daughter Clementine. No, no, that is not right. Anyhow Marmaduke Marmot does some predicting of whether winter is over as well.
But best of all are the marmots of Logan Pass fame in Glacier National Park, who are so numerous, that if anyone climbs to the top of Logan Pass to be at the top of the pass at dawn of February 2, there should be a grand announcement made from there about the relative duration of winter.
But wait just a minute. Here is some late breaking news on that subject.
That is if there are any marmots left on Logan Pass. You see the Red Busses tend to run over errant marmot’s who run out in the road. Red Bus drivers known as gear jammers are told never to swerve away from anything lest they go over the edge with their seventeen guests so marmots sometimes get the worst of it.
But I digress.
What gentle readers want to know is what those marmots in the milk truck and Marmaduke up White Pine and the Logan Pass marmots saw in the early morning hours of February 2.
They saw their shadows on a cool, clear morning. Sorry, but really, we haven’t had much winter period this winter!
