Operation Garden Lion

When I was a sophomore I had a really close knit group of friends. We would all hang out together constantly and on any given night there were no less than 9 people in one dorm room. It was the the first time in any of our lives that we were on our own and making our own decisions. Good or bad...they were our decisions.

My roommate was a pizza deliver boy on the weekends and it eventually got to the point that he knew the Sinking Spring/Shillington area better than the twins who had lived there their entire lives. He saw a lot of houses and outside one he found a replica of the Nittany Lion Shrine on someone's front lawn. It was love at first sight. He took advantage of every opportunity to deliver to that house and scope out this lion.

One Sunday night, he came back from work and decided that was the night. He and two others were going to steal the garden lion. They dressed in all black and planned to strike and 3 a.m. (I still have the picture of them and if we were still friends I would post it because it really is pretty funny).

As mapped out as the plan sounded it was doomed from the beginning. They had the stealing of the garden lion down but they had no idea what they were going to do with a 3 foot long garden statue. I guess they were just going to stick it in someone's dorm room. They came back shortly after leaving without a lion. Apparently no one took into consideration how heavy the thing would be. I heard phrases like "It was too much", "Who the hell carried that thing there in the first place?", and "It was at least 350lbs."

After that the lion was never mentioned again. He fell out of love as quickly as he had fallen in. I never had the chance to see the lion so I can neither confirm nor deny these alligations of the size and weight but I still laugh whenever I see the real lion shrine on campus.