It has been five years since Milltown Mel dazzled Groundhog Day crowds in New Jersey with his predictions of the springlike or wintry days that lay ahead.
The groundhog, the borough’s third Mel, was about 3 years old when he died in late 2021. Russell Einbinder, one of Mel’s tuxedo-wearing, top-hatted handlers, drove to Tennessee to pick up a replacement, a newborn.
But state officials, worried about an exotic strain of rabies, seized the chuckling — as baby groundhogs are called — months later from where he was housed near a funeral home that had been running the beloved annual Feb. 2 ceremony since 2009.
“He never actually got to be the Mel,” Mr. Einbinder lamented.
On Monday, the hope Mr. Einbinder held of reinvigorating a tradition that sometimes drew as many as 1,000 revelers to Milltown, a borough of about 7,000 residents in central New Jersey, took another hit when Gov. Philip D. Murphy vetoed a bill that would have made it easier to import a furry understudy from another state.
The governor concluded that the risk of rabies was too high.
“While I cannot endorse a policy that creates an exemption to our longstanding prohibition against importing animals from states in which rabies is endemic, I do not believe that this means municipalities must abandon their annual Groundhog Day traditions,” Mr. Murphy wrote in a veto memo.
A primary sponsor of the vetoed bill, Sterley S. Stanley, a Democrat who represents Milltown in the State Assembly, is not giving up on finding a solution. But Mr. Einbinder is less confident.
“You can’t just get one off the street,” he explained. “You have to have one since birth.”
Groundhog Day is celebrated on Feb. 2 in various spots across the United States and Canada. Tradition has it that if the groundhog emerges and sees its shadow on that day, winter will last six more weeks; if not, spring will arrive early.
At this time of year, when most groundhogs are hibernating, it is nearly impossible to line up another rodent of unusual size with less than a month to go before the festivities, he said.
“Right now, I’m not looking positive. I’m not looking negative because I never give up, unless I have to, but it’s not looking good,” Mr. Einbinder said as word of the governor’s veto began to spread throughout Milltown.
Borrowed groundhogs that live in zoos — like one of the state’s other celebrity groundhogs, Lady Edwina of Essex, who resides in West Orange’s Turtle Back Zoo — are an option, but that has so far not panned out, Mr. Einbinder said. The animals cannot be imported from states where exotic strains of rabies are endemic, and groundhog breeding, in general, is growing rarer, according to state officials who analyzed the legislation.
“I am disappointed that we could not establish a new pathway for Milltown to procure a new groundhog,” Mr. Stanley said, but added that he still hoped to find a “creative solution” that would allow the town to restart its cherished tradition.
Milltown’s Groundhog Day celebration began after Jerry and Cathy Guthlein, who at the time owned the funeral home, were inspired by the eponymously named 1993 movie — the one starring Bill Murray as a weatherman doomed to live the same day over and over again.
When they sold the business, the new owner, John McNamara, took over handling Mel, funding his year-round care and the coffee and doughnuts shared in celebration soon after the brief ceremony concluded. He also took the reins as the head of the Milltown Wranglers, a group that runs the annual event.
Mel spent his days in a specially constructed habitat known as the Groundhog Palace and was displayed on Feb. 2 in a hollowed-out tree stump, surrounded by Wranglers dressed in black-tie garb.
As at least two mayors of New York City can attest, groundhogs can be tricky to handle.
“They’re actually very vicious creatures,” Mr. Einbinder said. “They’ll bite right through your hand.”
Tracey Tully is a reporter for The Times who covers New Jersey, where she has lived for more than 20 years.
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