NEW YORK Thu Sep 25, 2014 three:15pm EDT
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio answers inquiries in the course of a news conference at City Hall in New York March 11, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A restless groundhog that squirmed out of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's hands and fell to the floor at this year's Groundhog Day celebration has died, zoo officials said on Thursday.
New York has held the annual Feb. two Groundhog Day event considering the fact that 1981 with the aid of famed rodent weather forecaster "Staten Island Chuck," whose shadow predicts whether the winter will be lengthy or brief.
But the rotund rodent that escaped de Blasio's grasp and later died was not the famed Chuck. It was his companion, "Charlotte," the New York Post reported.
Citing unnamed sources, The Post reported that Charlotte died in her enclosure at the Staten Island Zoo a week just after being dropped. She appeared to have suffered internal organ harm.
The zoo did not publicize the death or notify the mayor's office about it, the paper reported.
Charlotte was secretly applied in the 2014 Groundhog Day Ceremony by the zoo and presented as the Staten Island Chuck, the paper reported. The zoo made the switch to guard against a replay of an incident in which Chuck bit the hand of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the course of the 2009 ceremony.
Staten Island Zoo officials said in a statement on Thursday that they performed a thorough healthcare examination of the groundhog after the fall and located it to be wholesome.
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