On Groundhog Day, Charlotte’s most famous rodent burrows away into retirement
Queen Charlotte has called it quits.
After a long career fascinating thousands of visitors at Discovery Place Nature, the city’s most famous rodent is retiring, a museum spokeswoman said Wednesday, which happened to be the most special annual day of the beloved groundhog’s year.
“After eight years of service, Queen Charlotte has decided to step away from public life,” museum spokeswoman Sarah Wheat said in an email on Groundhog Day.
“We are no longer asking her to make public appearances or predictions and wish her well in her retirement at Discovery Place Nature,” Wheat said.
Axios Charlotte first reported Queen Charlotte’s retirement.
Queen Charlotte, who turns 9 this year, was so famous she even had a Twitter account, but the pull of retirement may have been too great.
Groundhogs, “also known as woodchucks or whistle pigs,” survive three to five years in the wild and up to 15 years in captivity, according to A-Z Animals.com.
Punxsutawney Phil and his shadow
Tradition holds that if a groundhog sees its shadow on Groundhog Day and returns to its hole, expect six more weeks of winter. If not, we get an early spring.
Groundhog Day festivals have been held across North America each Feb. 2 since the first one in 1887 in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, according to History.com. This year, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow.
Organizers of the festivals pick up a captive groundhog to show the crowd — a practice criticized by the animal welfare group PETA in a Jan. 25 letter to the Punxsutawney festival.
“Groundhogs have many strengths, from home design (their complex, multichamber burrows even have separate bathrooms) to hospitality (a typical groundhog greeting is a sweet nose kiss),” PETA said in the letter.
“Meteorology, however, is not one of them,” PETA wrote. “Yet The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club is still using Punxsutawney Phil as part of this tired tradition of exploiting a groundhog for tourism dollars.”
Of Queen Charlotte, Wheat said only that “she is living out her days in comfort and our animal caregivers are focused providing enrichment and her favorite treats. We are not thinking about a replacement right now.”
This story was originally published February 2, 2022 at 2:36 PM.