Mayor Bill de Blasio has groundhog blood on his hands!

A week after Hizzoner dropped Staten Island Chuck in front of a crowd of spectators on Feb. 2, the winter-weather prognosticator died of internal injuries — and then the coverup began, The Post has learned.

Staten Island Zoo officials went to great lengths to hide the death from the public — and keep secret the fact that “Chuck” was actually “Charlotte,” a female impostor, sources said Wednesday.

The stand-in was found dead in her enclosure at the Staten Island Zoo on Feb. 9 — and a necropsy determined she died from “acute internal injuries,” sources said.

She had fallen nearly 6 feet when the mayor lost his grip during the Groundhog Day photo op. Sources said her injuries were consistent with a fall.

Instead of revealing the sad loss, the zoo — which gets nearly half of its $3.5 million in annual funding from the city — told the staff to keep the mayor’s office in the dark about the animal’s fate.

They told only a few zoo supporters — but claimed that the groundhog had died of natural causes.

“I was told he died of old age, that he went to that big farm in the sky,” said Assemblyman Matthew Titone (D-SI), who later learned how the animal had died.

The zoo also never revealed the biggest secret of all — that the part of Chuck was being played by Charlotte. Chuck was benched because the zoo feared he could bite de Blasio, as he did Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2009.

The zoo doesn’t make public that it has stand-in groundhogs to protect the “groundhog brand,” insiders said.

A zoo spokesman tried to downplay the mayor’s role in the critter’s death, saying the animal was examined and seemed fine.

“It appears unlikely that the animal’s death is related to the events on Groundhog Day,” the spokesman said.

The mayor’s office learned of the death for the first time from The Post.

“We were unaware that Staten Island Chuck had passed but are sorry to hear of the loss,” said spokesman Phil Walzak.

The zoo plans to pull the same groundhog switcheroo next year by using the groundhog couple’s young daughter — also named Charlotte — in the role of Chuck, zoo sources said.



Additional reporting by Yoav Gonen