Paul Bunyan had his Babe, the Blue Ox.

Well. Big deal. We have (or had, for awhile) Babe, the Blue Face Cow.

A blue face cow? Yep. Sure did.

Our Babe, some of you may recall, is Gladys’ daughter. These two large ladies have been a part of our family for a number of years. I guess you could call them “rescue cows.”

I digress. Let me tell you the story of our Babe.

You see, just a few days after Hurricane Irene visited our tideland area, Sally came back into the house after feeding the “heavy honeys” and said, with a bit of alarm in her voice: “Babe’s face is blue!”

Oh, my. What malevolent malady has struck our girl?

Then it hit us. Well, not exactly that quickly. Shortly after we gathered a bit of “evidence” we discovered the cause of the blue face.

So. Here ‘tis:

Prior to the actual landfall of Irene, we told our good friend Ray (a real, bona fide Hatterasman by way of origin) that he was more than welcome to “moor” his boats — that’s right, boats —  two of ‘em, in the higher of our two fields. No storm had ever brought enough water to cause any problem in our “north forty.”

We assured Ray that our bovine beauties would pose no problems with regard to the boats, one of which was a sleek sailboat.

And they didn’t.

Except … except that Babe discovered that the rudder to the sailboat, which was up on a trailer, was a wonderful “scratching post” for her big head.

You are ahead of me now, I know.

That’s right. The rudder was painted blue. A paint that came off if rubbed hard enough.

Mystery solved. Our Babe had not contracted the blue-face plague.

Over time the paint gradually came off, with no ill effects from the experience for our Babe.

The actual color on her face was just a tad darker than Carolina blue, and not dark enough to be Duke blue.

Ray is a UNC grad. He is better qualified than I to correctly determine which color it most closely resembled.

I think Babe would have looked good with a purple face.