How Paul Bunyan Found Babe the Blue Ox (Campfire Story)

Long ago, in the great north woods, there came a winter so terrible that the old loggers only ever called it the Winter of the Blue Snow. It started on a Tuesday. The WIND blew down out of the north, and the snow that came with it wasn't white. It was blue. Blue as a robin's egg, blue as a jay's feather, blue as your lips after a swim in a mountain lake.

And it was COLD. It was so COLD that when the camp cook threw out his dishwater, it froze in midair and landed with a clank. It was so COLD that the flames in the campfire froze solid, and the loggers broke them off and used them for night-lights. It was so COLD that the men's shadows froze to the ground, and every morning somebody had to go around with a crowbar and pry them loose.

Now, in that camp lived the biggest logger who ever swung an axe: PAUL BUNYAN. Paul was so tall he combed his beard with a pine tree, and when he walked through the forest, the ground shook for miles. Even Paul didn't like going out in that blue blizzard. But one evening, as the WIND howled around the bunkhouse, he heard something out in the storm. It wasn't the WIND. It was small, and it was sad, and it sounded like it needed help.

So PAUL BUNYAN pulled on his mittens, wrapped his scarf around his neck nine times, and went out into the night. The WIND pushed against him. The blue snow piled up to his knees, then to his belt, and it was so COLD his eyebrows grew icicles. He followed that little sound across the frozen river and up over a ridge, until he came to a great blue snowdrift.

Sticking out of the top of the drift were two little ears and the tip of a little tail. Paul dug with both hands, and there, curled up in the snow, was a baby ox. A calf, shivering so hard his hooves rattled. And he was blue. Blue from his nose to his tail, blue as the snow he'd been lying in.

'Well, hello there, little fella,' said Paul, as gently as a giant can. He tucked the calf inside his coat, right up against his big warm heart, and carried him home through the WIND and the snow.

Back at camp, Paul built up the fire, wrapped the calf in three wool blankets and a horse blanket for good measure, and fed him warm milk from a bucket. All night long Paul sat beside him. By morning the little ox had stopped shivering. He opened his big brown eyes, looked straight up at Paul, and said the only thing he knew how to say.

'BABE!'

Paul laughed so hard the snow slid off the bunkhouse roof. 'You're just a baby,' he said. 'I'll call you Babe.'

Spring finally came. The blue snow melted and the rivers ran again. But BABE never turned back to brown. He'd been out in that blue snow so long that he stayed blue for the rest of his life.

And did he ever grow! Every time Paul turned around, BABE was a little bigger. He outgrew the bunkhouse, then the cook shack, then the barn. Paul built him a new barn every week until he finally gave up and let Babe sleep under the stars. When BABE was full grown, he measured forty-two axe handles between the eyes. He could eat a whole wagonload of hay for a snack and pull anything Paul hitched him to, whether it was a sled full of logs or a whole crooked river.

From that day on, wherever PAUL BUNYAN went, BABE the Blue Ox went too. And loggers say that on the coldest nights, when the WIND comes howling down from the north, you might hear something answer it from far away over the hills. Not the WIND. Something bigger, and a whole lot friendlier.

'BABE!'

Storyteller tips: teach the four sounds before you start and give everyone one practice round. Pause a beat before each cue word and point at the fire to bring the sounds in. You can give each cue to a different side of the campfire.

For younger Scouts, add more "It was so COLD that..." lines and let them call out their own.