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PAKISTAWNY, AFGHANISTAN -- The world's most wanted terrorist, Pakistawny Osama, emerged from his burrow Saturday and saw his shadow, indicating Afghanistan will see six more weeks of bombing.

In a traditional ceremony lead by Osama's handler, Chief Scribe Colin Powell, Osama was roused from his underground lair near the Afghani-Pakistan border in the early morning hours. Powell, who speaks the native "Groundhogese" of Osama, consulted with the half-man, half-rodent to record this year's prediction. He then flew by helicopter to the sleepy the hamlet of Pakistawny.

"And on this second day of February, two-thousand two," Powell read from a comically oversized parchment scroll, "Osama bin-Laden, alleged mastermind behind the September eleventh tragedy, and noted wartime prognosticator, confided to me that he did, indeed, see his shadow."

"Six more weeks of bombing," he concluded.

The legend of the woodchuck-Saudi halfbreed, and his strife-predicting powers, dates back over four centuries among the Islamic people of the region. In the mid-1800s, Western merchants learned of the tradition, but found the freakish ratman too distributing for their European sensibilities.

Today, a similar tradition is celebrated in rural Pennsylvania. However, the sanitized version involves a merely intelligent (not horrifically mutated) groundhog who predicts the weather (not armed conflict).

xandria@pigdog.org