A rural post office was told to prioritize Amazon packages. Chaos ensued.

But it wasn’t the buck hunt delaying the mail in Bemidji, a tiny town 100 miles south of the Canadian border where welcome signs are written in both English and Ojibwe and statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox tower in downtown. Since early November, Bemidji has been bombarded by a sudden onslaught of Amazon packages — and local postal workers say they have been ordered to deliver those packages first.