Punxsutawney Phil and wife Phyllis announce names of pups

PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. ( WTAJ ) — Punxsutawney Phil, and his wife, Phyllis, celebrated her first Mother’s Day in a very special way.

Dozens gathered at the Punxsutawney Groundhog Zoo Sunday morning to hear the long-awaited announcement of the names of Phil and Phyllis’ two pups born in March.

“Today, Mother’s Day, we decided it would be a fitting day to announce the names of our new baby groundhogs that belong to Phil and Phyllis,” Dan McGinley, Vice President of The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, said.

After carefully considering hundreds of names submitted by members of the Punxsutawney community and beyond, the proud parents and the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club have decided on the names Sunny, for the female pup, and Shadow, for the male pup.

The official scroll chosen by Phil reads:

Her ye, hear ye, hear ye. Now, on this 12th day of May in the town of Punxsutawney, the news is not about the weather, spring air or winters chill. No. Today the first family of groundhogs has grown. Punxsutawney Phil and wife, Phyllis, have two kids of their own. Born to royalty — a boy and a girl. Names have been chosen to share with the world. Welcome with us as we say hello to little girl Sunny and a boy Shadow with pride and joy as the kids play from Punxsutawney. Happy Mother’s Day.

Dan McGinley, Vice President of The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club

“One of our goals as the Groundhog Club is to bring tourism to Punxsutawney and to involve the community in any way that we can. So we thought it would be fun to put suggestion boxes around Punxsutawney,” President of the Groundhog Club Thomas Dunkel said. “We had hundreds and hundreds of suggestions. And from those suggestions, I used this cane and Phil and I talked about it and out of it, we narrowed it down to the top seven and Phil chose two from the top seven names.”

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While the two pups will not be participating in future Groundhog Days, as they did not inherit Phil’s forecasting abilities, you can visit Phil, Phyllis, Sunny and Shadow in downtown at Phil’s Burrow at the Punxsutawney Library.

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