The nation got closure this week on one of the most notorious rodent-related scandals in New York City history, a tragedy that has cast its shadow (ahem) over a time-honored tradition for nearly a decade. Yes, we’re talking about Groundhog Day 2014, when Mayor Bill de Blasio dropped the groundhog, who sadly died a week later from causes that were probably definitely related to being dropped.
As a refresher, after a zoo employee handed de Blasio the groundhog on that fateful morning, the animal appeared to scramble in a panic before launching itself off of possibly the tallest mayor in New York history (de Blasio is 6 feet 5 inches, if Wikipedia can be trusted). Schoolchildren’s screams and then awkward laughter ensued, and the groundhog got its revenge by predicting six more weeks of winter, before succumbing to internal injuries a week later.
We’re not sure why New York Magazine editor Benjamin Hart wanted to interview de Blasio more than two years after he left office, but thank goodness he did, and that he asked the hard-hitting questions we didn’t know we needed so that we could all collectively cringe again. After going deep into de Blasio’s relationship with the police and the governor, blah blah blah, Hart got to the good stuff: “On a lighter but more tragic note, do you have any regrets about dropping the groundhog in 2014?”
Of course the man regrets that. He dropped an animal in front of a ton of reporters and schoolchildren, became a national laughingstock, and then it died. But if you were hoping nine years of introspection and reflection have led him to take any responsibility for causing this animal’s death, you’re going to be disappointed.
“Yeah. 100 percent. I’m like, ‘Don’t make me hold a f—ing groundhog.’ I mean, what the hell? Let me tell you exactly what happened.” Oh, please, yes! Some of us had actually forgotten this happened but are suddenly riveted.
“I go there, and it’s seven in the morning, which means my motor skills are not at their best.” So his caffeine hadn’t kicked in yet, and he’s not a morning person. We can relate.
“I put on these gloves, and they’re like, ‘Here’s a groundhog,’ I’m like, ‘What the f—?’ I’m like, ‘Don’t you have a little more coaching to go with this or whatever?’ It was idiocy.”
I mean, sure, if someone suddenly handed me a groundhog that I hadn’t been expecting, I too would not know what to do with it and might have dropped some f-bombs, if not the animal itself.
He, on the other hand, was the mayor of New York attending a Groundhog Day celebration, so what did he think was going to happen? Has he never seen video of one of these events before? There’s always a mayor, often wearing a black top hat for some reason, hoisting a squirmy animal into the air for a crowd of cold spectators to see. Did he not ask any questions beforehand? And why did he think he was wearing those enormous gloves designed for animal handling if not for handling an animal?
But again, it was early. Maybe had hadn’t even had his coffee yet, and it is a weird tradition.
“Why would you want an elected official to hold a groundhog?” de Blasio continued, raising, admittedly, an excellent point. It does seem like a bad idea to trust a politician, and maybe this one in particular, with a zoo animal. But everything’s clear in hindsight, right? Still, not a great look to immediately jump to defensiveness and blaming others.
“I don’t know anything about holding groundhogs. So the whole thing is just insane.” He went on to blame a lack of advance work to properly prepare him.
Sadly, the interviewer failed to ask any followup questions about the strange multi-layered cover-up surrounding groundhog-gate. Although the groundhog died on Feb. 9, the zoo decided not to tell anyone, including the mayor’s office, maybe hoping that no one would notice. That worked until September, when an investigation by the New York Post, maybe the only worthwhile reporting the paper has ever done, revealed the grisly truth.
At that point, the zoo claimed the local icon had died of unrelated causes, maybe old age, before later admitting that it might have been related to its 6-foot tumble off the mayor. The autopsy revealed internal injuries, so yeah, probably that.
But wait. It gets worse! At first everyone assumed that the deceased was Staten Island Charlie, the city’s long-trusted prognosticator of springtime. But the Post found out that Charlie had a secret stand-in, due to the fact that he bit former Mayor Michael Bloomberg during a previous event. As it turns out, groundhogs are really good judges of character, okay?
Wanting to avoid another public mauling, the Staten Island Zoo substituted Charlie’s granddaughter Charlotte that day, without telling anyone that’s what they were doing. Hey, no one would have ever known if it hadn’t been for de Blasio’s ineptitude with handling zoo animals! But then he lost his grip on poor Charlotte, and things got super awkward.
While parts of this story are as darkly funny as they are horrifying, it’s still a sore subject for some New Yorkers who refuse to let the former mayor live it down. That includes the ghost of Charlotte G. Hogg, or whatever defender of groundhogs runs her twitter account in memoriam:
Strong words, but at least everyone learned their lesson. In the words of de Blasio, “Don’t hand someone a groundhog, right?” Fortunately, New York has discontinued the practice of foisting wild animals at public officials, de Blasio stopped going altogether as of 2016, and for the past two years, he’s not even mayor anymore. Well, that last one is a relief, at least.
(featured image: created with imgflip)
