Dinosaurs are once again roaming near Yellowstone National Park… but it’s not what you think.
Thanks to a well-thought-out and well-executed prank, dinos have returned to the land which they once roamed. No, it’s not a “Jurassic Park” situation. Instead, a bout of stealing – and then placing elsewhere – had a lot of people in the Yellowstone community doing double takes.
After all, you’d never imagine seeing a dinosaur looking over the Yellowstone River.
This one just so happened to be 6-foot-tall, 12-foot-long, green and made out of fiberglass. It also only weighs about 150 pounds, and if you aren’t catching on just yet, I’m talking about the iconic and beloved Sinclair gas station mascot: “Dino.”
When Sinclair gas stations were more plentiful, you used to see these all over the place:
And over the years, the mascots that stand guard outside of the gas stations have become a popular target for snatching.
The latest example of one of the dinosaurs being stolen played out in Gardiner, Montana. Derek Johnston, who works for the Gardiner gas station, told Cowboy State Daily that they noticed their green dino out front was missing. Then, reports of dinosaur sightings near the Yellowstone River started stacking up.
Johnston quickly put two and two together, and sure enough, their dino had been unbolted, picked up, moved about 10 miles away next to the Yellowstone River, and then rebolted.
“It could’ve been worse. Whoever took him obviously planned this, because they brought all the proper tools to remove it from our location, then drill into the granite and anchor it to the cliff face.”
It was more of an inconvenience than anything else. There were no cameras that picked up the culprits, so Johnston set out to retrieve the gas station’s dino and return him to his rightful, bolted down spot. He was appreciative that the pranksters didn’t damage “Dino,” and says they did a great job bolting him down tightly next to the river:
“They did a pretty good job, and I was absolutely impressed.They didn’t even damage it — and definitely put some thought into it.”
The ol’ “I’m not even mad, that’s impressive” line à la Ron Burgundy.
Johnston and some others carefully worked to get the green dinosaur off of the cliff face, and then eventually got the fiberglass beast back to where it belonged. Well, not exactly back to where it was. They’ve decided to keep it inside the gas station for the time being as the game plan for the future:
“We brought it back and tucked it inside our shop. It’s in a safe place right now until we figure out how to anchor it so that doesn’t happen again.”
Obviously, they are hoping it doesn’t happen again. But if it does, those that mess with it could face a felony charge, since the dinosaur is worth over $8,000. They got lucky that the thieves took good care of “Dino” this time around. Johnston still isn’t sure who is to blame, but he’s got an idea:
“It might be a smart thing to put a tracker on it in the future. The jury’s still out on who actually took it. We suspect it was locals because there’s no damage.”
If it was locals, the Sinclair station better make sure they figure out some sort of deterrent. If they stole the dinosaur once and moved it to a cliff side, they’d probably go through the trouble to do it again.
