Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Babe the Blue Ox
Babe the Blue Ox was the stuff from which legends were made. And it was.
There are many stories about the creation of the Grand Canyon. A few people insist that it was carved out by Noah’s flood. Capt. John Hance always claimed that he dug it out by hand and then dumped all the dirt at San Francisco Peak outside Flagstaff. But according to some very reliable sources it was none other than Paul Bunyan and his Ox Babe who plowed out the canyon. Now I am not sure which version that you believe but please take note of the following. The Kodak company reports that a statue of Babe and his sidekick Paul outside Bemidji, Minn, are the second-most-photographed statues in the United States right after Mount Rushmore. Moreover the local Rotary Club wrangled a $68,000 grant from the federal government to restore Babe to his former greatness. Now Klamath, Oregon could have used a little of that money. The 1000-pound head of their own Babe just fell off right before Christmas. To be sure they did promise to make repairs in January but in the meanwhile they just hung a wreath on the statue where the head used to be. In any event we may wonder why the feds are shelling out taxpayer dollars to restore an old deteriorating piece of sculpture.
But I digress too much. Did Babe really plow a furrow along the Colorado River? Well it turns out there really are blue oxen, the Belgian Blue Ox breed. They are a souped-up version of a beef cow bred to produce lean meat. In this case the blue steers have muscles rippling all over their bodies. The extra muscles are the result of a genetic mutation that turns off the myostatin gene that leads to the withering away of our muscle tissue when we get older. Although chicken farmers and others are trying to cultivate specimens with the genetic alteration, the Belgian breed is the only successful mutation out there thus far. And it really is blue.
This genetic change is not confined to the animal world. Over the years there have been a few humans who have been born with the myostatin-repressive gene. Most recently at the tail end of the last century The New England Journal of Medicine reported the birth of a super baby with Charles Atlas type muscles. Alas after a few articles the baby has dropped from the public view. I just hope that he doesn’t get nicknamed “Babe” during his lifetime.
But the whole point of this digression is that there is now an over-sized blue ox species. Just think of the possibilites. Think of a Yorkie with the muscles of a bulldog, or a whippet (there is a supposed picture on the WEB of a whippet with the genetic mutation). Now if this breed of oxen has come into existence in recent years, is there any reason to question that there might have been a real “Babe” way back when? Moreover if that German Super Baby grows up to be a Goliath we could have our model of old Paul himself. We have federal funding and photographic evidence of an American icon. So we can doubt old John Hance but Babe that is another story.
