Campus has been transported back into the Jurassic Period with the arrival of Roy the Raptor this semester (Photo courtesy of Roy the Raptor)
By Lizzie Hobbs, Staff Writer
Gettysburg College students have been thoroughly perplexed (and entertained) since the beginning of spring semester by the emergence of a new campus celebrity, Roy the Raptor.
With his first Instagram and Twitter posts going up on January 24, this Gettysburg student documents the daily experiences and thoughts of a simple, college student dinosaur. After being spotted around campus by many students throughout the course of the last week, Gettysburg College is starting to ask: Who is Roy the Raptor?
After contacting the Raptor earlier this week to express interest in writing this article, he left a note for The Gettysburgian staff to make his mission statement clear: “My name is Roy the Raptor. Despite my threatening appearance (I am a predator, after all), I am a very friendly dinosaur. Not many people know this, but I am the first dinosaur to attend Gettysburg College. Fact. That might not be a big deal for some, but it is to me. My goal is to go around campus spreading joy and getting a good education.”
In his note, Roy the Raptor went on to assure the campus community, “I don’t mean to frighten or bother anyone. I’m just a lone dinosaur at a school for humans, trying to get by in life.”
To share more of his backstory, the campus dinosaur wrote, “My favorite hobbies are climbing trees and splashing in puddles. My favorite food used to be human, but now it is cooked asparagus (like I said, I’m adjusting). Yep, life as a raptor is pretty hard, but I get by. I like making people laugh when I walk by. I like eating cooked asparagus.”
He also took a moment to reflect on some troubling memories from his past: “Sometimes I wish that meteor had never hit, but hey, you know, that’s life. You live, you die, you try to forget the meteor that killed your family. What can you do?”
Roy the Raptor has been posting fairly consistently on both Instagram (@the_gettysburg_raptor) and Twitter (@RoytheRaptor1). Though we may never know the true identity of the person behind the mask, Roy the Raptor has certainly caught the attention of Gettysburg campus.
