Mayor de Blasio took part in his first official Groundhog Day ceremony on Sunday at the Staten Island Zoo. (Source: Staten Island Advance)
Mayor de Blasio will be attending the annual Staten Island Zoo Groundhog Day ceremony Monday, and he is assuring that no groundhog will be hurt like last year.
De Blasio joked to the Staten Island Advance that a "task force" was "trying to figure out how to wrap me in platinum so that no harm will befall me or any groundhog in vicinity of me."
"There's a team of scientists working on that as we speak," he said Friday.
The zoo had reportedly been making a change to prevent the mayor from handling the animal, one year after the creature squirmed from de Blasio's grasp and fell several feet to the ground.
It died a week later.
The groundhog -- who was not actually the famed Staten Island Chuck, but a female stand-in named Charlotte -- had predicted six more weeks of winter.
An autopsy revealed it suffered internal injuries, but it was not clear if they stemmed from the fall.
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The story prompted a flood of Twitter jokes about a #Groundhoghazi cover-up and de Blasio's possible impeachment. And it wasn't even the first time a mayor had had an unfortunate run-in with a Staten Island groundhog: A squirming Chuck bit then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2009.
The New York Post reported earlier this month that the zoo is changing its ceremony this February so the mayor won't pick up the animal. Instead, it will be in a plexiglass case. A spokesman at the zoo declined to comment.
Last year was de Blasio's first time participating in the ceremony. He has admitted that he wasn't ready to handle the groundhog.
"I must say last time, there was not an overwhelming amount of preparation and orientation before I was handed him," de Blasio said earlier this month. "May he rest in peace."
The zoo has four groundhogs, all with the variations of the brand name "Chuck." On the morning of Feb. 2, zoo staff selects which of the groundhogs will participate in the ceremony and be dubbed Chuck for the day.
The animal's formal name is Charles G. Hogg.
