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I moved to New Orleans because I was sick and tired of this Groundhog Day nonsense. I mean, seriously, how would you like to have some nitwit haul you out of your burrow every darn year in February of all months? In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, too. Do you know how cold it gets there?

So I faked seeing my shadow in 2007. They let me back in my burrow for another six weeks while they all panicked about an extended winter. Gullible fools. While they weren’t looking, I packed up and moved to New Orleans. Suckers!

Guess the joke was on me. You see, I’m a furry little critter, and Louisiana gets downright muggy. I’m serious. If I spend an hour or two outside during the day, I come home feeling like I’m carrying half the contents of Lake Pontchartrain in my coat. It’s gross. Seriously.

As a result, I spend a lot of time in my burrow. Fortunately, I found a spiffy little burrow underneath a brothel off of Bourbon Street. Sweet, right?

Especially when I met Lady Marmalade. Oh, Lord, sweet Lady Marmalade. A tabby, that one, and shorthaired. She’d spend all day sprawled out on the porch behind the brothel, and at night, she’d join me in my burrow.

Life was pretty good, even with the darned heat.

One day, something came through the floorboards from the brothel above. An amber liquid, though I couldn’t give it a name. I just called it floor juice, and it smelled funny. Made my eyes burn, too. Well, it got real hot one day, and I was so thirsty I was drooling sand. So, I drank the stuff. Desperate times, desperate measures. And Lord, did it burn. At least, for the first few minutes. After a while, I just felt all warm and cozy in my little groundhog tummy, and I couldn’t get enough of the stuff. It made me silly in the head, and I said strange things to Lady Marmalade whenever she came around, but it sure did make me feel good.

She didn’t like it, though, and in February, she told me how it was going to be: Either I stopped drinking the floor juice, or she was going to leave me. Thing is, she didn’t realize how much it pained my head when I stopped drinking it. For hours and hours, it hurt. But, pains in the head and floor juice just didn’t hold a candle to Lady Marmalade, so I promised her I’d give it up. She said she was going away. Seemed something called Mardis Gras was happening, and she didn’t like it, so she was going uptown for a week until it was all over. When she came back, I’d better be done with all of that or she was done with me.

So she went away. I stayed in my burrow, kicking dirt on the floor juice so I wouldn’t want to drink it.

That night, I found out what Mardis Gras is.

Apparently, it is possible for humans to do more ridiculous things than pull a sleeping rodent out of its burrow in the middle of a Pennsylvania February and ask it for a weather prediction. These weirdoes must have been sent away from Punxsutawney for being too strange. They dressed in silly outfits and drank themselves stupid. The whole street smelled like floor juice, and they banged their drums and sang their songs and I don’t think I’ve ever known such pain in the head. Some of them took their clothes off and they threw necklaces at each other. One necklace fell into my burrow and some idiot tried to grab it. I bit his hand. Lord, you should’ve heard him scream. If my head hadn’t hurt so bad, I’d have laughed and laughed.

By the second day, I was losing my little groundhog mind. Punxsutawney sounded better and better by the day, because they only woke me up once a year. And they were pretty quiet about it. These folks did their Mardis Gras nonsense night and day, nonstop. By the third day, I wanted out of this burrow so bad I could taste it. I’d have been happy if some top hat-wearing mayor strolled along and yanked me out to ask me the weather. My head was hurting and my paws were sweating and this place smelled so, so bad. I wanted the floor juice like nobody’s business. Even after I’d kicked dirt into it, it was tempting.

Eventually, the pain got better. All I wanted was water to drink now, and I was finally free from the floor juice demons.

Today is the last day of Mardis Gras. They’re all wearing down, and soon they’ll be gone with their silly costumes and beads. Then Lady Marmalade will come back, and I have just one question for her when she returns:

“Lady Marmalade, will you come back to Punxsutawney with me?”

END

Copyright 2010 L. A. Witt

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