New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg must feel like he's getting hammered on all sides. Now he's gotten the ultimate insult: being bitten by a groundhog on Groundhog Day.

Bloomberg was already getting flack from city workers and teachers over job cutbacks he had proposed to help close the city's budget gap. So he probably figured that a quick photo op on Groundhog Day would be a welcome break from meeting with bean counters and banging heads with the president of the teachers' union. Well, he was wrong.

Bloomberg was posing with Staten Island Chuck (full name: Charles G. Hogg), the official groundhog of the five boroughs, when Chuck bit hizzoner's finger, drawing blood. Bloomberg applied a napkin to the wound until he could get a more appropriate bandage on the finger.

Bloomberg took the encounter in stride, joking that Staten Island Chuck might be a "terrorist rodent," and that he may have been trained by al Quaeda.

Watch out, Chuck, Guantanamo Bay probably has room for an unruly, ill-tempered groundhog. As the singers in that Bud Light commercial sing, "You're a fiesty rodent!"

- - - - -
Join Xomba: Write, have fun, and make money!