California doesn’t have the sort of weather-predicting groundhogs like Punxsutawney Phil – the closest factor you’ll discover might be an animatronic puppet in Quincy referred to as Chuck Wooden. What it does have is a desert tortoise named Mojave Maxine, who seems to be like a big, armored potato and throughout the winter is usually simply as energetic.
Maxine, who lives on the Dwelling Desert Zoo and Gardens in Palm Desert, has given seasonal predictions for greater than a decade through a reasonably easy course of. Round Thanksgiving, she enters brumation, a physique state through which reptiles change into sluggish or inactive throughout chilly climate. She takes an enormous, lengthy chill interval till proper round now, when she lastly shakes it off and crawls out of her burrow.
At this time, Punxsutawney Phil supposedly noticed its shadow, a not-very-scientific indicator that winter will final six extra weeks. And what about Maxine? She’s nonetheless comfortably ensconced in her burrow, which in response to lore is her manner of claiming we have now loads of frigid climate left. (It’s good when completely different species can come to consensus!)
The zoo is taking guesses from Ok-12 college students on when Maxine may emerge; most years, it often occurs in late January to early February. For these with an infinite quantity of persistence, there’s additionally a dwell webcam of Maxine’s burrow. At present it simply seems to be like a darkish gap however wait – was that some motion? OK, it was simply wind. Again to monitoring… monitoring….