When the Rustic Rooster was saved from major damage by their Bigfoot sculpture in a police chase that resulted in a wreck, Bigfoot became a local hero.
The sculpture, known to locals as “Daryl,” prevented damage to Marianne Quigg’s Downtown Cleveland shop when he came between an overturned Jeep and the rest of the store. While the Rustic Rooster sustained some damage, Quigg credits the store’s safety to Daryl. And so did the Cleveland community.
“I did not realize how much he [Daryl] was loved in the area until people started reacting to his injury,” Quigg tells Now Habersham. “I thought, ‘oh, this is a community thing.'”
Quigg says she painted Daryl’s cast on the morning of Dec. 4, about a week and a half after the wreck. Daryl was on the mend the day of Cleveland’s Christmas in the Mountains Parade, and while Quigg wasn’t able to stay at the Rustic Rooster that day, she says when she came back to work, his cast was covered in signatures.
“It was just an amazing outflowing of the community that came and signed it,” she says. “I love the warmth of the community. [I’ve been impressed] that everybody rallied in such a way. When I put the cast on people went nuts— I thought it was awesome.”
The Rustic Rooster was behind a meme depicting a scene of the crash that garnered controversy and has since been removed. Quigg shares in a Facebook post that after speaking to the family members of the man who caused the wreck that she, as well as other members of the Cleveland community, are working to support the involved family and “make beauty from ashes.”
“As a teenager, my family had to endure something very much like this with my own brother,” Quigg writes in the post. “I regret that those memories didn’t flood my mind before I posted that meme. We were a good family with a bad seed and we never knew what to do to get him straightened out.”
Now, she’s planning to either auction or raffle off the Cleveland landmark in the coming year, and donate the proceeds to Jericho House in Sautee Nacooche, a drug and alcohol recovery program.
“The young man who was involved in the accident has a substance abuse problem,” Quigg says. “I’ve kind of supported them [Jericho House] in my own personal way, but now this is what I want to do, to donate to this substance abuse program.”
After Daryl finds his new home, he’ll be replaced with his “other brother, Daryl,” who should arrive in the new year.
This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Marianne Quigg’s name.
