Everything's bigger in Paul Bunyan country. Including the storm that swept one 6,000-pound blue ox off his feet Thursday morning.
Heavy rains and winds that gusted over 50 miles per hour raked through central Minnesota and the metro. Up North in Brainerd, one mighty gust of wind slammed into the 60-year-old Babe the Blue Ox statue that stands watch over Paul Bunyan Land and sent it tumbling across the parking lot.
"It was kind of heartbreaking to see him like that," said Lois Moon, co-owner of the Brainerd amusement park, which was battered by straight-line winds that felled trees, ruffled a merry-go-round and shifted a few houses in the park's historic village off their foundations.
"It was probably the first time he's ever laid down."
The park was able to open on schedule Thursday while work crews tackled the Code Blue in the parking lot.
"Babe is going to be just fine," Moon said. "We very carefully set him back on his feet."
Photos on the park's Facebook page show a rumpled Babe — one horn askew and a hole in his flank from where he'd bounced across rocks and sign posts — being hoisted back on his hoofs again. The fiberglass statue, 18 feet tall and 24 feet wide, was impaled by a sign in the parking lot that left a hole in its side, said Adam Rademacher, son of the owner of the famed Minnesota attraction.
In folklore, it was a storm that brought Babe and Paul Bunyan together. The legendary lumberjack fished the baby ox out of a Minnesota snowdrift, blue with cold.
