Sad news has come from Canada. The cute and cuddly woodchuck “Winnipeg Willow” expired early on Saturday, January 30. 
Unconfirmed reports state that Winnipeg Willow was seen drinking heavily on Friday night, and was heard screaming, “I can’t take it any more, I tell you! I’m vermin! I break horses legs with my holes, and can demolish an entire vegetable garden’s worth of spring seedlings in one night! My Momma didn’t raise me to be no teddy bear! But for five years I’ve had to put up with this @%$#&^%, @#(**& @#$$^%. I can’t take it! Don’t they know the only time a woodchuck is ever good is in a stew?”
The caretaker could not be reached for comment.
The news that the groundhog died apparently set off panic in Canada’s large community of Global Warming Alarmists, who have stampeded to the southern border, making it hard for our reporter to get north for interviews (and to see if they wanted the yummy woodchuck meat, which is hard to come by in February.)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-willow-dies-groundhog-day-1.3426922
BREAKING NEWS
Government officials, speaking under conditions of anonymity, state there is no truth to the leaks that suggest Willow was driven to drink by government pressures that she only forecast warming winters, when she wanted to forecast six bad weeks coming after the current thaw. Copies of emails suggest Willow was offered a 100,000 carrot scientific grant to see no shadow, but the emails have since been erased and Willow’s laptop has mysteriously disappeared, asserted an anonymous source speaking at an undisclosed site to an under-educated reporter.
Further government statements from multitudinous leaks leaking under a guarantee of strict secrecy absolutely deny that Willow was assassinated, which is odd, because no one ever suggested that.
/sarc
Sunrise's Swansong 