Lackawanna County<\/a>, who made his debut Sunday at the borough’s Station Park on Church Street, prophesizing an early spring.<\/p>\nThat came as a relief to the frostbitten crowd that gathered to watch the inaugural event the day before a certain groundhog will greet the morning 200 miles west of Jessup. A cheer swelled and then erupted. Who needs that rodent, anyway?<\/p>\n
“I think early spring because I had enough of winter,” predicted youngster Anthony DeStefano, of Archbald, moments before Giuseppe emerged from his sleep and elected to eat white grapes, a sure sign the season’s icy grasp will soon loosen.<\/p>\n
Like most brilliant ideas, this one traces its roots to buddies spit balling at a barber shop.<\/p>\n
Matt Catanzaro told the crowd that his fellow co-organizer Mike McAndrew bought in right away.<\/p>\n
“Everybody thought it was stupid at first,” Catanzaro said. “But not Mike. When I told Mike in his barber chair at Three Saints Barbershop, he believed in it from the beginning. Then a few other people like Mr. Alex Boccardo believed in it. Then my father believed in it. Then Jessup Jim believed in it. Then we found out that Jessup Jim just so happens to have a magical ferret.”<\/p>\n
The rest, as they say, was history.<\/p>\n
Early on Sunday, Catanzaro, McAndrew and several others dressed in top hats and bowties to lead a crowd of perhaps 300 through the pomp and circumstance of weather prediction. That included making sure that Giuseppe’s blanket was arranged just so and that his grapes were properly prepared.<\/p>\n
“This did start out as something stupid,” Jessup Councilman Curt Camoni said. “It\u2019s still stupid. And that\u2019s what makes it awesome. You people saw a sign that said 8 a.m., come see a rat tell you if you need to wear a coat next week and you said, ‘let\u2019s go!'”<\/p>\n
Something of a boo came from the crowd. In fairness, Giuseppe is more of a weasel than a rat.<\/p>\n
The crowd waited with bated breath, frozen tongues planted firmly in numb cheeks.<\/p>\n
Finally, at around 8:30 a.m., the ferret stirred, nibbled on a grape and whispered into Catanzaro’s ear a strange, forgotten language that he studied for “days, if not weeks” to understand.<\/p>\n
“Out pops he in frosted air\/eyes the grapes and picks with care\/with one side-glance, the verdict\u2019s clear\/white grape grins, spring time\u2019s near\/jolly good tidings, Jessup Groundhog Day\/for an early spring is on its way,” the organizers pronounced.<\/p>\n
The crowd soon dispersed, eager to get warm. Despite what Giuseppe said, it was still the beginning of February.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jessup Giuseppe, the prognosticating polecat of the Midvalley, makes his debut at the inaugural Jessup Groundhog Day JESSUP,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-102503","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-scranton","9":"tag-scranton-headlines","10":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}