Ok, everyone. It’s time to take out your pencil and paper or quill and inkwell or chisel and stone tablet and write down a story about groundhogs. Yesterday was Groundhog Day, and as you probably know, Punxsutawney Phil did see his shadow, which means we’re going to have to hunker down for six more weeks of winter. Which is what I feared.

Here’s a story I wrote today about groundhogs. I hope you like it.

The Mad Groundhog

There once was a groundhog named Lonnie who was mad pretty much all the time.

He was mad because his name was Lonnie, and he really disliked the name Lonnie.

He was mad because he didn’t like alfalfa, and all his mother served for breakfast was Alfafa.

But mostly he was mad because of his brother Phil.

Phil was a big problem.

Everyone loved Phil. He was practically famous. Every year on February 2nd, he waddled out of bed, stood on the stage for a few minutes, and either cast a shadow or didn’t.

In exchange, the whole world loved Phil and put him on TV and basically let him sleep and eat alfalfa all year long. Phil never did a single useful thing.

Lonnie, on the other hand, worked hard digging dens, all day, every day. And because Phil was so busy being lazy, Lonnie had to dig twice as many dens to pick up his slack.

When he wasn’t digging dens, Lonnie was attending meteorology classes at the local community college. His plan was to learn as much as he possibly could about how weather actually worked so that he could expose Phil for the waddling fraud that he was.

As February 2^nd approached, Lonnie was excited. He had a plan. He stayed up all night on February 1^st making elaborate charts. The next morning, when Phil lumbered onto stage and stood there like a chump while the sun either shone down or didn’t, he, Lonnie, would run out and show everyone his charts, which clearly stated that winter would last exactly three-and-a-half more weeks—regardless of whether or not it was sunny the next day, which, Lonnie knew from studying the weather, it wouldn’t be!

Lonnie stayed up extra late to make sure that all his charts were perfect. He practiced the speech that he was going to recite when the mayor of Punxsutawney asked him to replace his brother as the groundhog of Groundhog Day.

All night long he dreamed of the applause. And the applesauce. Which is what he really wanted to eat instead of alfalfa. The mayor would give him as much applesauce as he wanted. He could almost taste it.

The next morning, he woke up and…saw that it was 10:45am, more than three hours after Phil had finished doing his yearly pointless waddle.

Lonnie was crushed. His plans would have to wait for another year.

Meanwhile, the mayor gave Phil a huge bowl of applesauce, which Phil didn’t even eat.

And Lonnie got a splinter.

THE END

Now it’s YOUR turn. Tell us a story about a groundhog and post it to the comments below. Remember that ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING can happen in your story. ANYTHING AT ALL! That’s why it’s so fun to write a story. That’s why I LOVE being a writer.

You can be one, too.