Sunbonnet Soliloquy

By Jewell Ellen Smith

Victoria Interviews Groundhog ‘Woodie’

How the tabby cat at our house got the name “Victoria” we’ve long since forgotten -- she’s so old. Probably one of the children had read that English nursery rhyme in which two pussycats are talking.:

One pussycat declares, “I’m going to London to see the queen!”

And the other one asks, “What will you do there?”

And the first one replies, “I’ll catch the I mouse under her chair!”

Well, Victoria never went to London and I never will. And so far as any of us know, she has never caught a mouse! She is quite content to keep herself fat on the fancy “Tender Twirlies” and “Vivacious Vittles” sold at the Ft. Rucker commissary (grocery store).

But, I should be ashamed of mentioning Victoria’s laziness, especially after she volunteered to put on my bonnet and do the February HEDGEHOPPER Soliloquy for me. She had heard me say I was working day and night on the new Easter play, and then we had unexpected company, and one thing and another happened.

As best I can tell, her piece is an interview with the groundhog that’s holed up under a half rotten log down near the branch behind our house. She maintains he is a personal friend of hers, and she calls him “Woody,” though that is not his real name.

She uses the nickname “Woody” because he resents being called a groundhog. He is, he maintains with much dignity, a woodchuck, a marmot, sometimes called a “whistler.” Be that as it may, here’s what Victoria turned in on the afternoon of February 2:

“Good morning, Woody! I see you’re out to look for your shadow this morning -- just as all groundhogs, Uh-- Uh-- I mean all woodchucks, are supposed to do on February 2!”

“Ah, Miss Victoria, my dear feline friend, that’s a lot of foolishness! Frankly, I got up to look for a bite to eat, not to look for my shadow! Hibernating all winter can leave one a bit hungry!”

“Why, Woody! You disillusion me! All my nine lives I’ve heard cats -- and human beings, too -- say that when February comes, the only way in the world to tell if we’re to have lots more of the cold, cold winter is to watch the woodchucks on the morning of the second day of February.

“If you and all your kinfolks come out and see your shadows, that’s supposed to scare you and make you go running back into your burrows! Then, you won’t come out again for six weeks! And that means we will have six more weeks of bad winter. But, if February 2 is a dreary, cloudy day and you all don’t see your shadows, you will stay outside and springtime will come early!”

“Miss Victoria, that is -- shall we say -- hogwash! No, let’s not say ‘hogwash’ for as I’ve said to you on many occasions I don’t like the word ‘hog.’ Let us say it is plain superstition, or, at best, tradition.”

“My goodness, Woody! Now I don’t know what to believe!”

“Don’t let it worry you, Miss Victoria! Winter will go away. Spring will come at its appointed time. It always does. Whoever made us creatures fixed all things in order. He made it so the sun comes up and goes down, every day. The moon and the stars come out at night.

“He told the wind how to blow, to come swooping down toward the south, turn round, whirl about, go back, and come again. The wind has a regular circuit. The rains fall, to water the hills. Even our little branch down here knows to run on to the river, and the river runs on to the sea. Yet the sea is never full.

“You can depend on all these things, Miss Victoria. You can depend on Him who fixed them all. They will never change. He will never change. And that sort of makes me glad!”

“Me, too, Woody!”

Published February 1980. Click your browser’s ‘Back’ key to return.