Allyson Bird - Internship Diary

Dec. 7:

Of all the celebrities I've glimpsed this semester, I have a new favorite. Punxsutawney Phil, the Pennsylvania groundhog who predicts spring's arrival every year, was awakened from hibernation for a press conference in Washington about the Punxsutawney Weather Discovery Center.

Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., got the weather center $100,000 for improvements, but some watchdogs were calling the funding "pork," based on the nature of the project and how the money was slipped into legislation.

The groundhog had little to do with the weather center -- except that he's from the same town -- but he made the story a fun read.

Press conferences here tend to be pretty uneventful, so it's certainly not often that you get to see a wild animal urinate on a table in a House of Representatives office building. That is newsworthy.

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