A Pomquet, N.S., man has a whale of a tale in his front yard – literally.

Robert Delorey has placed a large whale skeleton on his lawn, and it’s getting plenty of attention.

The part-time fisherman calls it "the big one that didn’t get away."

“It's different I guess,” said Delorey. “That's why I put it (outside).” 

The skeleton is six metres of what appears to be a minke whale. It's believed to be the same one that washed near the shore of Pomquet Harbour late last fall.

Delorey never gave it another thought until a visit from a relative three weeks ago.

“My nephew Chris from Ontario and I were in the harbour boating around, and we seen the skeleton there on the shore. We investigated a little more, and sure enough it was all bones. So we picked it up and took it ashore (and) cleaned it up.”

It took two trips for Delorey and his nephew to bring the bones up to the family's summer cottage. They figured the only way they were going to solve this jigsaw puzzle was with help from the Internet.

“We didn't figure out. We didn't know which part of the tail and the head, but he looked it up and he knew where everything went,” said Delorey. “I put some numbers on it when I took it from where it originally was so I would know where they were going and everything.”

There's no odour coming from the bones, and people are getting a close look at an interesting lawn ornament. The neighbours know why it's at the cottage and not in front of Delorey's house.

“His wife wouldn't let him,” said neighbour Shirley MacDonald. “He put it in front of our house. But I love seeing it.”

“(It’s) definitely different,”  said neighbour Jennifer Morris. “But this is really cool, so I'm glad that they got the whole pieces.”

Delorey says there's nothing strange about his beachcombing discovery.

“It's interesting,” he said. “I do a lot of fishing and everything and I guess the story was the big one didn't get away.” 

Because the bones are brittle, Delorey says he plans on putting on a clear coating of some sort to protect them, and he'll be putting them away for the winter with hopes of being able to show them off again in the spring.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Dan MacIntosh.