PETA says Punxsutawney Phil should be a hologram. Gov. Shapiro says, ‘Don’t tread on me.’

As certainly as Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day awakes to “I Got You Babe” every morning at 6 a.m., every year around this time, PETA calls for Punxsutawney Phil to be retired to a sanctuary and replaced by some perennially preposterous proxy.

Past Phil-ins suggested by PETA include: an animatronic groundhog, a giant gold coin, a vegan weather reveal cake, persimmon seeds, and a 36-year-old woman named Amber Canavan from Portland, Ore., who volunteered herself as tribute to take Phil’s place, “livestream her monotonous life all year long, and give an equally unscientific weather forecast.”

This year the animal-rights organization has offered to replace Phil with “a giant, state-of-the-art, 3D projection hologram of a groundhog” like he was Tupac Shakur.

The best part of this proposal is that this year, PETA included an artistic rendering of their idea, which shows that if hologram Phil predicts six more weeks of winter, he will be blue and surrounded by snowflakes, and if he predicts an early spring, he will be pink and surrounded by flowers.

Either way, this would be one mammoth marmot. Hologram Phil’s paws appear to be about the size of a human head, which, if you’ve ever encountered a groundhog in real life, is both an adorable and terrifying prospect.

PETA even says the hologram would come “complete with vocal weather predictions,” which I also shudder to think about. Groundhogs sound like squeaky dog toys, which is perhaps not the best sound to rally a drunken crowd in a small Pennsylvania town at the crack of dawn.

In response to the proposal, Gov. Josh Shapiro — a noted fan of Phil who’s hosted the wondrous whistlepig at the governor’s residence and has attended Groundhog Day celebrations in Punxsutawney — posted a photo of Phil on X this week with the words “DONT TREAD ON ME.”

I reached out to the Governor’s Office to see if Pennsylvania’s boss hog was serious about his support of the state’s famous groundhog.

“He is indeed very serious about his defense of Phil,” Alex Peterson, a spokesperson for the Governor’s Office, told me.

PETA’s position, as stated in a letter from founder Ingrid Newkirk to Tom Dunkel, president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club’s Inner Circle, is that groundhogs are timid prey animals who want to avoid humans at all costs.

“They dislike human smells, fear loud noises, abhor gatherings, and prefer to stay in their burrows,” Newkirk wrote. “Yet every year, this terrified little animal is subjected to loud announcers and noisy crowds and held up and waved around without any regard for his feelings, welfare, or instincts.”

I see their point — Phil never particularly looks happy to predict the weather. Mostly he just seems confused at why he’s being asked to do so and what this life is all about.

Plus, there are plenty of other Groundhog Day traditions that happen in Pennsylvania and across the country without a real animal. At the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge in Southwest Philly, a puppet named Tinicum Tim pops out of the ground to predict the weather. In Reading, a bucktooth groundhog mascot with a fancy pink bow gives her prognostication atop the Reading Pagoda. And in Quarryville, a mounted taxidermy groundhog gives predictions from the top of a manure spreader called the “Pinnacle of Prognostication.”

Michael Venos, who runs the website Countdown to Groundhog Day and has been to many of the alternative celebrations, said he considers the events “just as fun” and the “predictions just as valid.”

Venos said he shares PETA’s concerns for Phil and all prognosticating animals.

“While I’m sure in the past, the animals’ welfare was not the primary concern for the people who organize these events, I believe, and am trusting, that nowadays, the utmost care is being taken to make sure that the animals are safe and well cared for,” he said. “Punxsutawney Phil in particular seems to live a very cushy life and appears to be well taken care of.”

Phil lives one of the bougiest lives of any Pennsylvania resident, and who’s to say he woodchuck it all away, if given the choice?

According to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, there’s only ever been one Phil. He drinks a special “elixir of life” every summer, which has kept him young for going on 140 years. He does not, however, share that elixir with his wife or two kids, a burrowed secret that’s shadier than seeing your shadow on a cloudy day.

When not predicting the weather, Phil lives with his family in a climate-controlled burrow in the town library, which is connected by underground tunnels to a brand-new home the Inner Circle had built for them last year at Gobbler’s Knob.

Two homes and a secret underground tunnel network — in this economy?!? Lucky.

Phil also finds time to travel and has his own party bus. As I mentioned before, he visited Shapiro at the governor’s residence in 2023, and this year, he attended the Pennsylvania Farm Show as a celebrity guest.

I see both sides of the argument here, but given that our second-most famous groundhog in Pennsylvania is already computer-generated and heavily into gambling, I say we keep the real Phil around for now.