Ankylosaur, Willow Park
forget garden gnomes. If you really want to impress the neighbours, chain an armoured dinosaur to the tree in your front yard. This is Gertie. She lived at the Calgary Zoo until she and her fellow Cretaceous creature-friends were evicted back when the current prehistoric park was built, 20-odd years ago. Destined for the rubbish bin, Gertie was rescued by a part-time zoo employee who took pity on the fibreglass statue. After a few years standing guard in front of an industrial shop, she was offered to Nolan Benoit.
“I said yes right away when my friend asked if I wanted it,” says Benoit, who decided “Gertie” was “a nice, antiquated lady’s name” for the grande dame. He admits now that he probably should have checked with his wife, Tonii, before coming home with a life-size ankylosaur, but, happily, it seems nobody can resist Gertie. Tonii was smitten on first sight, and the couple say the neighbours have never expressed anything but affection for the giant lawn ornament. For nearly 17 years, the Benoits have watched cars slow down in front of their house for a look, and every June they witness highschool grads in tuxes and taffeta posing on the dinosaur’s back for photos.
Gertie’s current habitat, however, hasn’t been entirely without peril. One Easter Sunday, six or seven years ago, the Benoits woke up to find their beloved pet had been vandalized, her head savagely sawed off. As the couple stood in disbelief, they were joined by a crowd of sympathetic neighbours. But Gertie’s apparent extinction was to be short-lived. The fuss on the lawn attracted the attention of a young man driving by, who took one look at the decapitated dino and told the Benoits to hold tight, before zooming away in his tiny sportscar. Moments later, he returned with Gertie’s head in the passenger seat. (It was too big to fit through the car door, so he’d lowered the head through the sunroof.)
“The young man said he’d noticed something odd dumped in his girlfriend’s garbage bin a couple of blocks away, but he had no idea what it was until he saw Gertie,” says Benoit, who promptly reinforced Gertie’s neck with steel bars and reattached her head with industrial-strength glue. The only remaining evidence of the incident is a thin line of glue and plaster where a collar might be. Gertie, having survived extinction more than once, remains unfazed.