Another State Calls for Punxsutawney Phil's Head

Seems Punxsutawney Phil is on everybody's not-so-hot list after promising an early spring that didn't exactly come to pass. Days after an Ohio prosecutor indicted the weather-predicting groundhog, calling for the death penalty, a Maryland police department has issued a wanted poster, DCist reports. The critter is wanted for fraud because he "claims he is a weather forecasting groundhog," yet Montgomery County is "still waiting" on that early spring. Tip from cops: "He may be hiding in a hole."

But Phil has been issued a reprieve by the Ohio prosecutor, after the groundhog's handler took the blame for the faulty forecast. "I'm the guy that did it; I'll be the fall guy. It's not Phil's fault," Bill Deeley, president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club's Inner Circle, tells the AP. He explains that he didn't interpret Phil's "groundhog-ese" correctly, and that Phil actually did predict six more weeks of winter. In return, prosecutor Mike Gmoser has dismissed the charge. (More Punxsutawney Phil stories.)