The Giraffe Of Lake Ronkonkoma: What's The Story?

LAKE RONKONKOMA, NY — It's almost impossible to drive past Todd Arnett's front yard without gazing at the towering wooden giraffe that protrudes from the dense foliage around the artists' workspace. The long-necked sculpture — named Fred Jr. — won't sit there forever, though.

The artist is making the sculpture for famed inventor and Long Island native Joy Mangano, whose rise to business prominence was chronicled in the blockbuster 2015 movie, "Joy," starring Jennifer Lawrence. But when the giraffe will be finished remains a bit up in the air.

"I don't have a final date at all," Arnett said." And I try to make it so I don't have one, because it's such an organic process. It's an 11,000-pound log."

Mangano has hired him to create two wooden versions of the long-necked animal. The exact reason for her preference is a mystery.

"She just really loves giraffes for some reason," Arnett said.

Fred Jr. is the "son" of an earlier giraffe that Arnett created some 15 years ago.

"The tree was rotted when I started, to a degree, and over time it decayed more," Arnett said of the first Fred. "So I'm making a replacement of the old giraffe ... I'm carving Fred Jr."

It's all part of the unique open-air studio that is Arnett's front yard on Lake Shore Road beside Lake Ronkonkoma, where rubberneckers in passing cars can glimpse of him hacking away at some log with his chainsaw. A bit further down the road, an even larger Arnett creation keeps watch over the road: the Native American princess, Tuskawanta.

Standing 32 feet high, the statue was carved in homage to the grim Algonquin legend that the princess drowns at least one man in the lake every year.

It was a winding road that brought Arnett, a Michigan native, to the edge of the sprawling lake. After a Florida business trip failed to yield the opportunities he'd hoped for, his luck turned in 2004, when he moved in with a cousin in Connecticut. The cousin, Sara Beck, insisted that he attend a Momentum Education workshop in New York City. Beck paid $500 to get in, and while he didn't know it, it put him on a path for Lake Ronkonkoma.

"Good," Arnett said, "but it wrenchingly changes your life — like pointing at all the things wrong in your life, for real, by strangers, in your face."

At the workshop he met two brothers who were opening up a cafe in St. James. They asked if Arnett wanted to help with the construction, and Arnett said yes. Bringing just a duffle bag full of clothes and a few tools, he did copper and stone work for them, as well as anything else the cafe needed to become operational.

The transition wasn't easy.

"I was lonely," Arnett said. "There was a lot of terrifying fear in there. Of course, I'm living on a cafe floor with a duffle bag, 750 miles from where I usually live. What I held onto, like in the hard times of the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep, I would remember that only two blocks away from here is a train station. And I'll go jump on a train. I wasn't stuck. I had that in my mind."

He had a decision to make: "Do I want to leave or do I want to stay here and see what happens? And I kept deciding to stay."

After living on the floor of the cafe in his sleeping bag for a few months, he was able to move in the fall of 2004. Fifteen years later, he lives in the same house.

"I didn't see a single person going around this island that I knew for 2 1/2 years," Arnett said. "I didn't know anyone. I was just going around by myself. I'd meditate a lot. Do my martial arts. Carve in the shadows. And I started carving in the sunlight out front."

Now 49, Arnett is heavily involved within the local arts community, which lately has meant playing a leading role in the first-ever Princess of the Lake Festival, held over two days in June, which allowed local artists to set up stands for free to show and sell their work.

With the support of local artists, Arnett has recently set up a GoFundMe to help raise money for new equipment.

He has practiced different forms of meditation, and is a black belt with decades of martial art experience.

Asked about why he's stayed in Lake Ronkonkoma for the 15 years, Arnett isn't exactly sure, but he has a theory.

"I'm always drawn to water," he said. "All the things, the synchronicities and all the little circular movements and all the connections, and how it is now, I would say that I'm here for a reason. I guess I'm obviously here for a reason."

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