Quebec's beloved Fred la Marmotte dies on Groundhog Day
montrealgazette.com
A child attending the event was called in as an emergency replacement and predicted winter will continue.

Quebec's beloved Fred la Marmotte dies on Groundhog Day

Fred la Marmotte, Quebec’s beloved groundhog who predicts whether spring will come early, was found dead early Thursday, just hours before he was supposed to perform his annual ritual.

“This year, things will be done differently,” said la Jour de Fred committee organizer Roberto Blondin on the event’s livestream.

“I’m announcing the death of Fred. It’s sadly true.”

Children and adults attending the early morning ceremony gasped when they heard the shocking news.

“Everyone was very sad, you could see it on their faces,” said Renée Laurendeau, a spokesperson for the event, which is held every Feb. 2 in the Gaspé town of Val d’Espoir.

A child attending the ceremony was called in as an emergency replacement. She was handed a stuffed toy groundhog and predicted that winter will continue.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Or more poetically - a gamma ray burst.

    How Deadly Would a Nearby Gamma Ray Burst Be? | News | Astrobiology

    Despite the obvious doom and gloom associated with mass extinctions, they have a tendency to capture our imagination. After all, the sudden demise of the dinosaurs, presumably due to an asteroid strike, is quite an enthralling story.

    But not all mass extinctions are quite as dramatic and not all have an easily identified culprit. The Ordovician extinction — one of the “big five” in Earth’s history — occurred around 450 million years ago when the population of marine species plummeted. Evidence suggests that this occurred during an ice age and a gamma ray burst is one of several possible mechanisms that may have triggered this extinction event.