Big change?: PETA looks to replace Pa.'s prognosticating groundhog with enormous coin

The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have proposed a, quite literal, "change" to Pennsylvania tradition by offering to replace Punxsutawney Phil with an enormous, golden, weather-predicting coin.

“Groundhogs can’t make heads or tails of the weather forecast and shouldn’t be jostled around by large members of a different species and thrust in front of noisy crowds for a photo op,” PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said, in a statement on the offer. “PETA is urging The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club to send Phil to a reputable sanctuary that will give him the care he needs and not to treat him as a wildlife prop.”

PETA made the offer in a letter the group claims it sent to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club -- the organization that says it's task is to "protect and perpetuate the legend of the great weather-predicting groundhog Punxsutawney Phil" -- on Monday.

In the letter, the animal rights group claims the enclosure where the groundhog is kept "year-round at the local library so that one day a year he can bring revenue and attention to Punxsutawney simply isn’t humane" and said subjecting the animal to the yearly festivities should be ended, "[j]ust as eating groundhogs is no longer part of the annual tradition."

PETA has offered to provide a coin -- with one side calling for six more weeks of winter and the other an early spring -- for Groundhog Day organizers to use instead of relying on the weather predicting capabilities of a marmot.

The group also argues that the coin would be just about as accurate as Punxsutawney Phil.

"A coin lands on the same side about 50% of the time, whereas Phil’s predictions have been shown to be correct around just 40% of the time," the letter states.

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In the past, PETA noted, the group has also offered to replace Punxsutawney Phil with a persimmon tree or a willing human participant.

Contacted for comment on the proposal, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club did not immediately respond to NBC10.

However, on its website, the club says that Phil lives, not in an enclosure, but in his own burrow that connects to several locations throughout the town -- including Barclay Square, the town park, and the Punxsutawney Memorial Library.