Ex-mayor Bill de Blasio finally came clean about the infamous time he dropped a Staten Island groundhog that later died of internal injuries — a marmot debacle first broke by The Post in 2014.
More than nine years after the accidental animal slaughter, de Blasio said in a candid interview with New York Magazine published Wednesday that he should never have been trusted to handle the groundhog.
When asked if he had any regrets about dropping the rodent during the Groundhog’s Day event at the Staten Island Zoo — the Democrat replied: “Yeah. 100%.”
“I’m like, ‘Don’t make me hold a f–king groundhog.’ I mean what the hell?” he said of the events on the day that has seemingly forever stained his political career with groundhog blood.
De Blasio — who is notoriously not a morning person — gave his version of what happened on his first Groundhog’s Day as mayor.
“I go there and it’s seven in the morning, which means my motor skills are not at their best,” he told the magazine. “I put on these gloves, and they’re like, ‘Here’s a groundhog,’ I’m like, ‘What the f–k?'”
The butter-fingered mayor seemingly blamed zookeepers for the mayoral tradition of placing the weather-forecasting rodents into untrained hands.
“I’m like, ‘Don’t you have a little more coaching to go with this or whatever?’,” de Blasio said. “It was idiocy. Why would you want an elected official to hold a groundhog? I don’t know anything about holding groundhogs. So the whole thing is just insane. There’s an original sin here. Don’t hand someone a groundhog, right?”
He questioned the proper way to hold a groundhog — wondering if one should “squeeze it really tight.”
“I mean, what do you do? So I’m like, talk about a lack of advance work.”
Whatever method de Blasio decided to go with on Feb. 2, 2014, it didn’t end well. The 6-foot 5-inch tall mayor dropped “Staten Island Chuck” in front of a group of kids — some of whom gasped a the tumble, according to a video.
“Look how tall he is. Can you imagine falling from that height?” a mother who attended the zoo ceremony with her 14-year-old daughter told The Post at the time.
Months later, Post reporters revealed that “Chuck” was found dead seven days later and the cause of death was determined to be due to “acute internal injuries” consistent with a fall.
Staten Island Zoo officials had attempted to cover up the animal’s death to avoid public scrutiny for the institution and City Hall, which provided a large chunk of its funding.
They kept the de Blasio administration in the dark and only informed a few supporters of the groundhog’s passing — claiming it died of natural causes.
Perhaps most shockingly of all, the zookeepers catfished the public. “Chuck” was alive and well, while his lady friend “Charlotte” was the one killed by the estimated 6-foot drop.
The zookeepers had benched Chuck and replaced him with Charlotte for the Groundhog Day ceremony after the nippy male rodent bit de Blasio’s predecessor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg during the photo-op in 2009.
The year after Charlotte’s fatal fall, the Staten Island Zoo ended the tradition of New York City mayors holding up the critters before they searched for their shadow.