posted
DULUTH -- A jogger called police after spotting it shattered on the rocks below. There, underneath the bridge, lay the 8-foot, 100-pound rooster that had been an icon of neighboring Two Harbors for nearly four decades.
The fiberglass landmark, resting on its side, had been tossed from a bridge along Seven Bridges Road. It was spotted Thursday - days after it was stolen in the night from outside Weldon's Gifts.
Police called store owner Weldon Johnson, who went and retrieved his big bird. Back in Two Harbors, he couldn't stand the rooster back up on its perch outside the shop. Its feet had been torn clean off during the robbery late Sunday or early Monday.
So Johnson carefully laid it down.
``It looks so sad,'' he said. ``It's just barely hanging on to life. Pretty beat up. We're going to have to put a sign on it: 'Fowl play suspected.'''
Two Harbors police have no suspects, but there are a couple of leads, Chief Rick Hogenson said.
Shortly after the rooster disappeared, it was spotted in the back of a pickup truck along Highway 61 heading toward Duluth. Later, witnesses reported seeing it in a vehicle on the edge of town.
Hogenson wouldn't speculate whether the theft of the rooster was some sort of prank or practical joke. Likewise, Duluth Police refused to speculate about the recent theft of a lighted sign in West Duluth that looks like a giant license plate. It was taken from the front of a Department of Motor Vehicles building.
Swiping large, decorative animals and other eye-catching items is nothing new, especially in springtime and graduation just around the corner.
Burko, the ceramic buffalo in front of the Buffalo House bar, restaurant and softball fields, along Interstate 35 just south of Duluth, has been kidnapped, splattered with paint or otherwise been the target of foolery at least five times in the past three decades.
And the Two Harbors rooster has been swiped twice before. In 1971, it was recovered at the University of Minnesota Duluth. The other time, it was found in a nearby culvert.
Johnson, meanwhile, is weighing his options. His daughter found a company in Oshkosh, Wis., who'll sell him a new one for $3,200.
``We had this thing 40 years. It could stand to be replaced. It deserves it,'' Johnson said.
``This one will always be the original,'' he said of the fiberglass bird now scuffed, footless, full of holes and laying on its side. ``The next one will be extra crispy.''
Posts: 5484 | From: St. Paul, Mn | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic
