ONE of the first things people said to me when I told them a human-sized velociraptor had been found atop Mount Coolum was: "Why was it taken down?!"

How cool would it be, they asked, to make the climb on a Saturday morning, up the many and steep steps, scramble across the rocks, and be faced with the sight of a (harmless, in this case) prehistoric predator?

Pretty cool, I had to agree.

It's something the young and the young at heart all get a kick out of.

We don't know who put the 5-foot dinosaur on top of the mountain, or why, or even or how they got it up there (with some difficulty, one would imagine).

What we do know is it took three young ladies working together to get Bruce back down again (he's since been reunited with his original owner).

And while Bruce has moved on after his journey to the mountain top (he's even on Tinder, if any she-dinosaurs out there are interested), his brief visit certainly caused a stir. Something as unexpected as a dinosaur standing sentinel over the Sunshine Coast is bound to do that.

So why not make the odd reptile a regular feature of places like Mount Coolum? Or our beaches or parks?

We all know a guy nearby who has a whole bunch of dinosaurs he's not using at the moment.

Maybe Clive Palmer would donate one or two for pop-up installations across the Sunshine Coast?

There's something so joyful about finding something totally unexpected. We could probably all do with a little bit more of it.