So unchivalrous, Sir Walter Wally!

RALEIGH -- Sir Walter Wally emerged from the comfort of his red blanky, stuck a tentative nose into the cold Tuesday drizzle and spent roughly three seconds making this Groundhog Day prognosis: No shadow, short winter.

With that, he ducked back inside the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, where a high thermostat, a bowl of collards and - oh, yeah - a crowd of eager children were waiting.

From burrows nationwide, groundhog forecasters are crying sissy at Raleigh's soothsaying rodent.

Punxsutawney Phil rose on a frigid Pennsylvania morning to greet a crowd of hundreds huddled on Gobbler's Knob. He gave the air a thorough sniffing as he was held high by his top-hatted handler, and easily spotted his shadow - contradicting Wally's optimism.

In Atlanta, Gen. Beauregard Lee showed some of Wally's reluctance, and he didn't see a shadow either, but his handlers came to fetch him in the rain at 7:35 a.m. Wally got to relax indoors until noon, and for a while planned to make his weather call completely indoors, from an auditorium stage, using only shadows created by overhead track lighting.

This plan was rejected.

"Wally had a reputation to maintain," said Ron Shadduck, who brought Wally from the Genesis Wildlife Sanctuary near Boone, home to past and present Wallies.

It was at least rare, if not unprecedented, for Raleigh to relocate a weather celebration due to poor weather. John Connors, coordinator of the Naturalist Center at the museum, said he thought Wally might have been driven indoors once before in his 12years of making climate bets. The auditorium was spilling over with more than 300 people, many of them children sitting cross-legged on the floor.

"We'd like to be outside," Connors said. "But it's raining out there. We had a lot of ice out there [Monday] and we couldn't set up the stage."

Sir Walter Wally is 8, a codger by groundhog standards. So his frailty is perhaps understandable. But his quick analysis brings up questions of rushed judgment. With snow predicted in coming days, you wonder if Wally missed a storm front with his mind on blankets and greens.