Park Ranger Eric holds Ruby the Rapture, the first puppet he ever bought.
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Park Ranger Eric poses with another one of his puppets, Simon the Stegosaurus.
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One of the vehicles that will be at the Festival of Ice and driving in the parade on Friday.
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Clarks Summit’s 20th annual Festival of Ice, dubbed Jurassic Ice, will feature numerous dinosaur ice sculptures as well as a life-like dinosaur puppets courtesy of Eric Skurka of Jurassic Raptor 570.
Skurka, or Park Ranger Eric as he prefers to be called, will have a bunch of puppets, including Nugget, a baby T-Rex, available for people of all ages to see and even pet. Each dinosaur puppet moves its mouth, eyes, and tail and can pure, roar and growl.
In addition, Skurka will have on display fossils, dinosaur teeth, claws, a raptor skull and a juvenile T-Rex skull for people to observe.
He will also take part in the parade along with his three Jurassic Park-styled vehicles, which will also be parked around downtown this weekend.
For those who wish to know more about these prehistoric reptiles, Jurassic Rapture 570 will conduct four 10-to-15-minute presentations over the course of Saturday and Sunday.
While Skurka was always a fan of dinosaurs — he bought his ford explorer back in 1993 because of the iconic ranger vehicles featured in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park — but he stumbled into sharing that love with other people completely by accident.
In 2022 when the sixth film in the Jurassic Park franchise, Jurassic World Dominion, was about to premiere, Skurka decided that instead of taking his car to a car show he would take his ford rapture and decorate it to look like a park ranger vehicle from the original film.
“Everybody thought it was so cool,” he said.
After that, Skurka decided to buy his first puppet, a baby rapture, and the rest is prehistoric history.
“All of a sudden, I’m doing birthday parties and dinosaur clubs and dinosaur education,” he said.
Jurassic Rapture 570 can also be found at retirement homes, day care centers, summer camps and local railroad excursions. Skurka has also worked with Parenting Autism United to bring dinosaur fun and education to children with special needs.
So far, his favorite part of going out to all of these events is seeing the smiles on people’s faces, whether they’re 10 or 100 years old.
Skurka also shared why he thinks people are so fascinated by dinosaurs.
“I think because we’re always finding new information. Some dinosaurs were just so big and some were so little; there’s just so much to learn,” he said.
