Annie Schuster couldn’t believe what she saw Sunday night when scrolling Instagram. She ran to the kitchen to show her husband the grisly crime that had occurred in their Manayunk neighborhood hours earlier.
Bridget the Dino, a 3-foot-tall costume-sporting stone Tyrannosaurus rex, was ruthlessly beheaded, in the garden she calls home. Bridget’s head, still wearing a scarf, was lying at the foot of her stone body in the photo posted by the Manayunk Bridge Garden, the dinosaur’s caretakers.
Schuster and her husband, who live in Manayunk and take their children to see Bridget regularly, were in shock. “I thought it was like an unspoken rule, you leave Bridget alone,” she said.
Roxborough resident Juliane Holz felt a wave of anger and sadness as she learned of the vandalism, “She’s actually decapitated,” she said to herself upon reading a text from a neighbor.
Park volunteers notified the community that someone knocked the head off the statue in a heartfelt Instagram post Sunday evening. While the park didn’t announce any suspects or persons of interest, they’re calling on the community for help. “If you saw anything, or know what happened, please reach out,” the statement said. Volunteers filed a report of vandalism with Philadelphia police, but neighbors aren’t expecting police to catch the person who did it, Holz said.
Holz, who serves as a volunteer for the Roxborough Manayunk Conservancy, which oversees the garden at Dupont and High Streets, believes the vandalism occurred between a volunteer event that the garden hosted Saturday evening and early Sunday, when neighbors walk their dogs in the morning.
Schuster and other parents teach their children the golden rules of keeping one’s hands to oneself, so it’s perplexing to think an adult would do something like this, she said.
“I think it definitely had to be an adult, which is unfortunate because it’s not very adultlike behavior. It had to involve a lot of strength because I don’t even know how you carry one, they’re so heavy. Let alone knock it over and put it back up.“
Holz echoed other neighbors’ sentiments that it must have been an intentional act committed by an adult, seeing as the 300-pound Bridget would be difficult to move even for the strongest Philadelphians, Holz said.
This is a blow to a neighborhood, Schuster said, which has steadily been redefining its community spaces to be more green, inviting, and a safe place for the many young families of Manayunk. Bridget the Dino is a symbol for the patchwork of neighbors who are volunteering their time and contributing to public spaces. On holidays, locals adorn her in themed costumes, like a witch for Halloween or rainbow-colored skirts for Pride.
“It seems like something silly to be upset about, but someone put a lot of effort and money — these statues and improvements are not cheap — into making that bridge garden a really nice place,” Schuster said. “I hate the fact that somebody did that.”
Holz and Schuster both agree that if a perpetrator is caught, they will receive a community service punishment of a full year of mandatory weeding. “The most grueling job in the garden,” Holz said.
Does Manayunk replace or repair Bridget the Dino?
Holz said that the Manayunk Bridge Park will neither replace nor repair Bridget, as the dinosaur is “irreplaceable” and it would be disrespectful to place another stone dinosaur in her stead and refer to is as “Bridget.” Park volunteers are wary of repairing Bridget because of the slanted break across her neck. Any repair could easily succumb to the weight of a child riding her back or a dog leaning on top of her, and cause injury, Holz said.
Bridget originates from the local home and garden center store, Holod’s on Ridge Pike in Lafayette Hill, which hosts an annual stone T. rex costume contest. Last year’s winner was “Rexy the Paleontologist.”
In the wake of Bridget’s destruction, Holod’s will be donating a brand new stone dinosaur statue, Holz said. Several neighbors already own stone dinos from Holod’s, which has become a staple on stoops throughout Roxborough and Manayunk. Holz’s home dinosaur is named Hans.
Many offered to donate their own, but Holz is grateful for Holod’s contribution.
This isn’t the first time animal statue vandalism has hit the Bridge Garden. Bridget had a friend named “Gary the Goat,” a similar-sized plush goat toy who dressed up alongside Bridget, who was stolen from the park in 2023. “He was stripped of his clothes, and poof, he was gone from the Manayunk Bridge Gardens. Bridget misses her friend,” one Roxborough Rants & Raves Facebook group member wrote at the time.
As the Manayunk Railroad bridge was converted into a pedestrian and cyclist bridge in 2015, a movement began to revitalize the green spaces along the trail, birthing the Manayunk Bridge Park around 2020. Bridget the Dino, named after the bridge she lives at, soon arrived and graced the park as its loyal guardian and mascot for the wider community.
It also helps that Bridget is eye-level with most young children for approving pats on the head, Schuster said.
Bridget will soon be repurposed elsewhere in the garden to safely rest and continue her tenure as the garden’s guardian, Holz said. Once the new dinosaur statue arrives, the community will have to come together to imagine a new name and backstory, “Could it be Bridget’s child or maybe an entirely new dinosaur altogether?” she said.
