God Hates Fiberglass Dinosaurs 

Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.

DERBY, Kan. — A 60-ton animatronic dinosaur named after an Earthquake God Lizard was struck by lightning Sunday night and burned down to its skeleton, which is, in hindsight, exactly how an Earthquake God Lizard should expect to go out: struck down by The Almighty himself. God was unavailable for comment, as per usual. 

The Sauroposeidon, the longest animatronic dinosaur ever built, stood three stories tall and stretched 93 feet at Field Station: Dinosaurs, a roadside attraction whose name appears to be dodging some kind of trademark violation. On Sunday night, a thunderstorm pushed through and set the giant dinosaur on fire. Fire crews managed to contain the blaze to just Sauroposeidon, sparing the park’s other 39 dinosaurs from what officials described as “an extinction-level event.”

This is also the second time in recent American history that lightning has reduced a giant fiberglass roadside attraction to a charred steel frame. In 2010, lightning destroyed the King of Kings statue, a 62-foot Jesus made of styrofoam and fiberglass over a steel armature, which stood outside the Solid Rock Church in Monroe, Ohio, that had been nicknamed by locals as Big Butter Jesus. After the strike, only the blackened steel skeleton remained, making the installation look more like a horrifying monument to a James Cameron film franchise. The church’s electronic sign, with what one must assume was unintentional accuracy, posted the message “He’ll be back,” at which point the structure was rebranded as Terminator Jesus.

Guy Gsell, executive producer at Field Station: Dinosaurs, told reporters the model is irreparable and that the park has no immediate capacity to replace it. The dinosaur had recently survived wind damage and was freshly repaired, a sequence of events with which any homeowner can painfully sympathize. “Even if I wanted to replace it as soon as possible, I really have no capacity to do that right now,” Gsell said.

To add insult to injury, the company that manufactured this particular life-sized animatronic dinosaur is located in China, and China is currently not shipping animatronic dinosaurs to the United States due to tariffs. 

A full replacement is expected to cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, assuming one can be sourced at all. In the meantime, the park is reportedly considering turning the surviving steel frame into an educational exhibit. Visitors will be able to see how an animatronic dinosaur is built by looking at the part of one that did not burn away completely.

The park reopened the following day as scheduled. Operations manager Steven Howe noted that traffic actually increased, with visitors describing themselves as having come to “pay their respects” to the Sauroposeidon. One man told reporters he had not previously known the park existed and had only learned of it from memes of the fire, a sentence that, parsed honestly, suggests the marketing department should have started their own electrical fire eight years ago.

The Derby Fire Department, for its part, marked the occasion on social media by noting that this was the first dinosaur fire the city of Derby has experienced in 65 million years. They did not specify how they verified this.