We Are All Charles G. Hogg Now

He’s biting what we’re thinking . . . free Staten Island Chuck:

Is there redemption after public disgrace? Say you didn’t pay your taxes. Or you were too tight with the lobbyists. Or maybe you bit the mayor.

Redemption? Not for Charles G. Hogg, a k a Chuck, the mayor-biting groundhog at the Staten Island Zoo.

First — on Groundhog Day, no less — Chuck botched the biggest photo opportunity of his not-quite-3-year-old life. He chomped on Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s index finger.

That raised a question for follow-up: Would Tuesday’s Chuck be any kinder or gentler?

So the zookeepers trotted him out for another photo op. Only one camera and two reporters showed up this time.

That word “trotted” is a problem. It suggests politeness. It suggests civility. It suggests everything that Chuck was not as he went rampaging across the stage in the zoo’s auditorium, knocking over a prop-size statue of a giraffe.

Then one of the photographers put a photograph of Mr. Bloomberg where Chuck could not miss it. Chuck rubbed his lips on the corner of the picture frame. He was not making nice — it looked as if he had bared his teeth. But the mayor should not take this personally. Chuck did the same to everything he rubbed up against before he jumped off the stage and waddled around the auditorium for a victory lap, Chuck style.

. . .

By Tuesday [. . .] John J. Caltabiano, the executive director of the zoo, had the one-liners ready. One, inevitably, was about biting the hand that feeds you. The city provides as much as half of the zoo’s budget, Mr. Caltabiano said, and the city is cutting its share by 17 percent in the coming fiscal year.

Mr. Caltabiano is well aware that the mayor has survived past Groundhog Days without injury. In his office is a framed photograph of the mayor holding a groundhog in February 2006.

But the groundhog in the picture was Chuck’s father. Eight groundhogs have played the role of Chuck in the last 27 years. Monday was the first time that Mr. Bloomberg had handled the current Chuck, who is apparently feistier than his father was.

It might have been the last time, too. Mr. Caltabiano said that he was working on breeding Chuck VIII and would retire him if there was a Chuck IX by next Groundhog Day.