Imperial Valley Press

If there is one fellow with a cinch life it is John J. Groundhog, who has been wise enough to make his home in Imperial Valley.

While his cousins in other parts of the country were bruising their paws today scratching out through snow and ice to find out if they have enough provender on hand for the remainder of the winter, our John J. is skipping about in his summer flannels, never having learned that there are such things as snow and ice.

Nor has he had to learn the wisdom of storing up enough energy to last him while he hibernates through the winter. For him there is no necessity for gorging himself for a long sleep, only to wobble out weeks later, looking like a disgrace to the animal kingdom, his head filled with the one idea of what a heck of a world this is.

Many of his cousins will return to winter quarters today, possessing the knowledge that they must continue to suck the paw for a few more weeks. Their's cannot be an untroubled sleep. It must be punctuated with horrifying dreams, filled with the unhappy thought that they possibly did not eat enough, and that the coming of spring will find their souls in the happy hunting grounds or wherever groundhogs go when they die.

Here John J. does not even have to grow an extra heavy coat of fur; he doesn't have to file his claws to dig through frozen ground; field mice, moles and other groundhogian tidbits are fat and slovenly the year 'round, making the procuring of dinner a larg instead of a gamble; and for 365 days in the year he sees his shadow and doesn't have to give a hoot about it.

John J. is surely living the life of Riley, and when you stop to think about it he is not the only one in Imperial Valley who is sitting pretty.