johnvano.com: A Witness to History

This morning at 6:45 a.m., I headed out the door with Madison and Marshall for the Yellow River Game Ranch where Gen Beau Lee (Georiga's official groundhog) was scheduled to forecast the rest of the winter. When we arrived, there were maybe 40 people around his cage. Madison and Marshall got some free hot chocolate from the Waffle House guy who felt badly that I couldn't partake because of my diet, so he gave me a handful of free waffle coupons. Again, the diet, dude.

Madison then petted one of the live deer roaming around the premises, and we grabbed a spot in the second row for the festivities. There we stood for about a half an hour before the groundhog came out of his big white mansion. Madison said it looked like George Lincoln's house. "You mean, George Bush?" I asked. "Yeah." "She's hitting them all just to be sure," was the smiling comment from the mother in front of me. It was 39 degrees, but not too chilly.

An 8-year-old Georgia pageant winner rang the bell to stir Beau at sunrise, and we heard of the 98% accuracy of the groundhog from Atlanta radio's Southside Steve. We whooped and hollered for him to come out, but he didn't test the sunshine until he had some grits put at his door. He did not see his shadow, but wandered around before hiding behind a discarded Christmas tree. In the end, there were two TV news crews and various newspapers on hand and perhaps 200-250 people.

At 7:35, we wandered around the game ranch for about a half hour or so, petting deer, watching the chickens and roosters running around, eyeing the peacock 40 feet up in a tree, feeding the goats, and seeing hogs, ponies, burros, Asian buffalo, a mountain lion, a pheasant, a couple of black vultures, and a hungry squirrel that the kids wanted to feed. We capped off the morning with the kids riding the 25 cent horsey ride (I guess you're never too old for that). I took them home, then went into work. I got there in record time--about 30 minutes, instead of my usual hour (maybe I should head to work every morning at 8:40).