Nine days and about 25 inches of snow ago, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and predicted (very accurately, as it turns out) that we’d have six more weeks of winter.

Now, one snow-covered New England town is going to do something about it.

On Tuesday, the Merrimack, New Hampshire, police department posted on its Facebook page that a warrant had been issued for Mr. Phil, depicted by the department as the gopher from the hit 1980 film Caddyshack (gophers and groundhogs, while not the same animal, do closely resemble each other):

Lt. Denise Roy of the Merrimack Police Department told Boston.com that Mr. Phil is wanted on charges of “deception.’’ The department has never put out a warrant on an animal before, but Roy said this was also “the first time we’ve ever really wanted to put out a warrant for an animal.’’


Indeed, the Merrimack police are determined to bring Mr. Phil to justice, even if it means crossing state lines.

“We would extradite no matter where anyone finds this rodent,’’ Roy said. While Mr. Phil is known to reside in a burrow in Pennsylvania, Roy said she hoped he would be found in Florida, or perhaps Arizona.

“Someplace warm,’’ she said.

Joking aside, Roy said that the weather hadn’t seemed to increase or decrease the crime rate in the small town (population: around 25,000), though the snow tended to bring out neighborly disputes, sometimes, as has been the case here, involving snowblowers. By contrast, major crimes in Boston this year have dropped dramatically (by 34 percent, according to The Boston Globe, though that number should change after Wednesday’s fatal shooting in Jamaica Plain), possibly because no one can leave his house to commit them.

While deception seems like a minor crime, Roy said she would push for the maximum sentence should Mr. Phil be apprehended: “Life in the hole with no parole.’’