Which liberal group will be the first to claim butthurt?
When Punxsutawney Phil waddles out Saturday to glory in Groundhog Day, the mountain town of Brevard will summon its own harbinger of spring: A squirrel. A white squirrel.
Pisgah Pete is among the hundreds of white squirrels that call Brevard home. The town hasn’t let that go unnoticed, hosting the White Squirrel Festival, the White Squirrel Shoppe and a White Squirrel page on the website of Heart of Brevard, a downtown revitalization program.
“They’re darned cute, and people are fascinated by them,” said Katy Rosenberg, director of the, yep, White Squirrel Institute. “I’m always amazed at how many visitors ask about where to find the white squirrels.”
The answer is, just about everywhere you look, from the Brevard College campus to Rosenberg’s backyard. Forty percent of all squirrels in Brevard were white, according to the last full count in 2011.
Pisgah Pete will star at Saturday morning’s White Squirrel Day in downtown Brevard, where he will forecast both whether there will be six more weeks of winter and the Super Bowl winner. Pete has picked the NFL champion for four years in a row, his handlers say.
“We are so proud of Pete and his truly amazing ability to predict the Super Bowl winners,” Mayor Jimmy Harris, who will be on hand, told The Transylvania Times. “The event has grown each year due to his outstanding accuracy.”
The event will be broadcast live on WSQL radio and live-streamed, just like Punxsutawney Phil, at whitesquirrelday.com, the Times reported.