(Updated: Originally posted January 12, 2007)
Isn't this guy just the cutest thing you've ever seen?
"Grooming a Weatherman for His TV Debut, and Hoping He Doesn’t Bite the Host" by ANDY NEWMAN
Chuck the groundhog waddled out of his open carrier and onto the desk in the tiny reception office in the Staten Island Zoo. He walked onto the phone and stepped on a few buttons. A house line rang. “Thank you for calling the Staten Island Zoo,” the female voice said on the speaker. “You have reached the director’s office.”
Chuck left no message, or rather, he left a long, blank message, which is typical Chuck. It was just after 4 on Thursday last week, and Chuck was waiting to clock out and catch the bus.
Every weekend, Chuck, a strapping young hog born in April, goes home with his trainer, Douglas Schwartz, who works Sundays to Thursdays. This allows him to spend as much time with Mr. Schwartz as possible, and on the hourlong trip on public transit (Mr. Schwartz doesn’t drive), to get used to the prying eyes of strangers.
The hope is that when he makes his big debut next month he will not bite Regis in the face, or leave something unfortunate on Diane Sawyer’s desk, or, worst of all, see his shadow in the klieg lights and shrink back into his pet carrier for six weeks.
Mr. Schwartz: “On Groundhog Day itself, the limo just appears and whizzes us off to wherever. He has to always be on point.”
Chuck doesn’t get much chance to interact with the public during the week. He lives in a big cage in the zoo’s basement, which Mr. Schwartz says is fine with Chuck but which seems like a waste of the zoo’s sole marquee resident.
Mr. Schwartz, the zookeeper in charge of the zoo’s tropical rainforest:
“I’d like him to have his own exhibit, but it becomes a money thing. ‘Do you want reindeer, or does Chuck get an exhibit?’ ‘Well, we want reindeer.’ Reindeer are a very popular attraction with kids these days.”
The clock struck 5. Mr. Schwartz, Chuck and the other working stiffs filed out into the fading winter light. The S53 bus came lumbering, somewhat groundhog-like, down Broadway. Usually, Mr. Schwartz said, the driver makes an announcement along the lines of, “Ladies and gentlemen, Chuck has boarded the bus.” On this day, though, he just made small talk with Mr. Schwartz.
“Seems quiet,” the driver said.
“Yeah, he’s sleeping today,” Mr. Schwartz replied. Inside the carrier, Chuck lay on his back, paws on chest, buck teeth smiling blissfully.
A middle-aged woman sat beside Chuck and began shoveling Oreos into her mouth as she stole glances at the carrier with “Ground Hog” written in Magic Marker on the front. Chuck slept through. The woman got off, and an older woman replaced her. She peeked in.
“Oh, the cat’s sleeping,” she said.
“No, it’s a groundhog,” Mr. Schwartz said. The woman scowled and turned away.
Mr. Schwartz recalled: “One time someone on the bus called the zoo and complained that he smelled terrible, and I had to stop doing it for a year. Then we got a new director who said go ahead and do it, and the guy called again, and the director told him where he could stick his opinion.”
This Chuck is the sixth groundhog Mr. Schwartz has trained for the role since 1995 — his predecessor died last spring. Because he was born in captivity (in a zoo in New Jersey), he has been relatively easy to socialize — relatively being the key word.
Mr. Schwartz: “The patience involved is staggering. He’s got a brain the size of a cashew, so you really don’t have much to work with. They’re known for their aggression, so you’re starting from a hard place. His natural impulse is to kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out. You have to work to produce the sweet and cuddly.”
The bus driver called out, “Grasmere train station,” and Mr. Schwartz and Chuck hopped out and made for the Staten Island Railway, the island’s one-line aboveground subway system.
Chuck was a bigger hit on the train than on the bus. He was immediately surrounded by four baggy-pantsed teenagers. “Y’all just caught that?” a tall youth asked. A nurse practitioner from Staten Island University Hospital peered into the carrier and grimaced in the way people do when they see a not-quite-cute baby.
“What you got in there?” a man asked. Mr. Schwartz picked up the carrier and flipped it toward him. “Groundhog,” he said.
“Ho!” the man said, jumping back.
Joyce Casey, a waitress, took one look and was smitten:
“I swear, do not let me get my hands on him, I will keep him.”
At the Prince’s Bay station, almost at the bottom of the island, Mr. Schwartz’s wife, Carol, was waiting.
Mr. Schwartz, sounding like a proud father: “He slept the whole way on the train.”
Carol Schwartz asked: “Really? The whole way? Was he good?”
Mr. Schwartz: “He was very good.”
In the living room of the Schwartzes’ town house, Mr. Schwartz opened the carrier. Chuck poked his head out, carefully marked the door with the scent glands on his face, wandered downstairs and hid under a bed. Mr. Schwartz followed him and fished him out, accompanied by much squeaking and whirbling.
Chuck lay on his back in Mr. Schwartz’s lap in a big red chair. He grabbed Mr. Schwartz’s arm and soft-mouthed his hand. Mr. Schwartz stroked his coarse, brown-gray fur.
Mr. Schwartz: “He could do this for hours.”
Chuck’s weekend had begun."
