Driving up past our school, a giant dragon lays nested in front of the house of Green Bay police officer Joel Zwicky. 

This dragon, despite having never moved since its placement in front of the house at 1705 Chicago Street a couple years ago, has quite a story to tell. 

Officer Zwicky said the dragon was used during the igNight Night Market as a type of effigy to be lit on fire to wrap up the night. 

When asked how he found the dragon afterwards, Zwicky said, “I found it over on Walnut Street in a parking lot with a for sale sign on it. And I’m like, holy cow, this is the perfect opportunity. So I went over and saw that it was $5,000 and I’m like, oh, no, well, I’ll never own that.”

But fortune had a different plan. 

Around four years later, when talking to his artist friend Don Crump, the memory came up on Facebook. When asking Don about the dragon, Joel was told that his friend had built the dragon and was currently keeping it at an outdoor art museum. 

Zwicky took the opportunity to have the dragon delivered to his house. 

“I live right on the main drag right across from high school,” Zwicky said to the dragon’s artist. “And he’s like, wow, that would be such an amazing place for the dragon to be because so many people would see it. And so he sold it to me for 500 bucks.” Since the delivery of the dragon, Zwicky has added to it with the chest that sits under its mouth to hold its wires. He only plans to add and refurbish the beast from here on.

Zwicky said that he knows just how much people love to see the dragon on their drives to work and plans on enjoying the limelight for as long as it lives.

“Most like it,” Zwicky said. “Most will come by and will take pictures of it and things like that.

“I love that thing. I think it’s just the coolest thing in the world.”