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Makeover For Minnesota’s Killer Wolf

December 8, 2008

For years a lone wolf nicknamed “Old Three Legs” worried the citizens of Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. He ate chickens, mostly, but some believed that he was a potential child-chewer, and his knack of not getting shot made him more fearsome. “Hunting parties of hundreds could not bring him down,” reads a lurid report on WDAY-TV, “his reign of terror still unmatched.”

(It’s no surprise that Old Three Legs hung around Detroit Lakes, if the nearby World’s Largest Turkey, Pelican, and Booming Prairie Chicken symbolize the local food supply.)

Old Three Legs was finally killed in 1926. He was stuffed and put on display in a local hotel, and then stuck in a barn for 50 years. The Becker County Museum got him in the 1980s and turned him into a popular exhibit. But Old Three Legs was never in good shape, even when he was alive, and decades of being dead hadn’t helped. “He was leaning,” said Carrie Johnston, the museum manager. “He had some mice chews.”

Old Three Legs was too important to collapse. The museum paid to have him restored, and he has just been unveiled to much local fanfare along with the gun that killed him (a recent donation). “At the time they were so glad that he was dead,” said Carrie, “but now everyone’s glad to see him back.”

The Becker County Museum is also home to a replica of the world’s smallest gas station (built by a local group after the original was torn down), a two-headed calf, and the former world’s largest ball of string, a 1930s effort that perhaps inspired Minnesota’s later giant ball of twine. “It’s 42 pounds and 140 miles long,” said Carrie, who needed no prompting.

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