Igot a good laugh the other morning while scrolling through the Northern Light Region, a fine weekly newspaper in Baudette, Minnesota.

There on the front page was a headline that read, “PETA Proposes Mermaid Statue in Baudette at Willie Walleye Park.”

If it hadn’t been late September, I would have suspected an April Fool’s joke.

Anyone who’s ever spent any time in Lake of the Woods country knows about Willie Walleye. Measuring some 40 feet long, the piscatorial landmark along state Highway 11 in Baudette is one of northern Minnesota’s most iconic and photographed fish statues.

The original Willie Walleye, constructed in 1959, had fallen into disrepair and was replaced with a snazzy new version in 2018.

As the Northern Light Region reported this week, PETA – short for People for the

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