Groundhog bites Wisconsin mayor

A groundhog called Jimmy has viciously bitten a US mayor during the annual "groundhog day" event.

According to tradition, Jon Freund, mayor of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, leaned in to hear Jimmy's weather prediction, but instead received a nasty nip, right on the earlobe.

It is believed that if the groundhog sees its own shadow upon emerging from its burrow, another six weeks of winter are in store.

Folklore has it that the mayor in any given town is the only person who can understand the groundhog's strange, presumably squeaky, rodent-language.

This year, it looks as if Wisconsin will indeed see an early Spring; however, Jimmy's counterparts, Pennsylvania's Punxsutawney Phil, and Chuckles, from Connecticut, both retreated underground after seeing their shadows ahead of them.

After the bite – which he took pretty well – Mr Freund tried to claim that Jimmy had whispered "spring is on the way," but let's face it, that's a pretty violent way to deliver a weather forecast.

It is conceivable that the psychic intuition that groundhogs are famous for tipped Jimmy off about the fate of Charlotte, the New York groundhog who was dropped by mayor Bill De Blasio last year and died of massive internal injuries a few weeks later.

Though some in the press unfairly labelled De Blasio a "murderer," (at most it's a manslaughter charge) it then transpired that Staten Island Zoo officials had gone to great lengths to cover up Charlotte's cruel and untimely death.

Maybe Jimmy whispered, "back off."