This is scandalous stuff if you really believe rodents can predict the weather: Punxsutawney Phil said we'll have six more weeks of winter yesterday. But his lesser-known counterpart at the Staten Island Zoo disagreed.
"Staten Island Chuck" also makes a prediction each year. And he said we're in for an early spring. But that's not the scandalous part.
The Staten Island event was virtual this year and was supposed to air live on Facebook.
But people who watched it quickly realized the whole thing had been PRE-RECORDED, because there wasn't any SNOW on the ground. (Here's the video. The prediction happens at 17:16.)
As you know, a huge snowstorm dumped close to two feet on New York this week. But there wasn't any snow in the video, so they obviously pre-taped it.
A bunch of people made fun of them online, and a few were OUTRAGED. One parent said their kids were confused and wanted to know why the snow disappeared. The zoo later said that the, quote, "magic of Chuck" must have melted it.
(By the way, this isn't the first Staten Island Chuck controversy. In 2009, he bit Mayor Michael Bloomberg. And in 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio dropped a "stand-in" for Chuck. And that groundhog DIED a week later.)
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