“Could Have Pulled It out With a Tractor” — Man Celebrates Birthday by Digging up Big Rock

A man wanted to dig up a rock in his backyard to celebrate his 39th birthday, and he invited his friends and family to help. Kyle Scheele (@kylescheele) uploaded footage of the unique joint effort to his TikTok account, where the clip accrued over 119,000 views on the popular social media application.

Kyle's video begins with footage of a large group of people standing in a circle and feverishly digging at the ground. From the onset of the clip, he explains what all of the excavating fervor is about.

"This weekend I had 48 of my closest friends over to dig a giant rock out of the ground to celebrate my 39th birthday."

Calling it "the best birthday party ever," in a caption for the video, Kyle goes on to detail what went down at the party and what inspired him to have such a unique premise for a birthday celebration.

"It all started last summer when my friend Jesse found this Instagram account of a guy who travels around picking up these huge stones as like feats of strength."

In the video, Kyle shows off the rock lifter in question's social media posts. The gentleman goes by Peaky Boulder online, and posts content on Instagram under the handle @travel_liftstones_repeat. In addition to picking up massive rocks, he uploads several videos of himself lifting weights and performing a variety of exercises.

Kyle continued to narrate in his clip that his friend Jesse thought that they could do something like that themselves. "Jesse was like we should do this do you have any rocks on your land that would be good?"

As he recounts their conversation, he shows screen-capped text message conversations that he and Jesse had.

Kyle got to work and began texting picture messages of different stones that could be good candidates for a lift session. "So I started sending him pictures of potential candidate rocks that I found in the creek."

Unfortunately, none of them were fitting the bill.

"But it was like a Goldilocks situation, he'd be like no this one's too big. This rock's too small." Finally, however, Kyle came across the ideal rock for such a video. There was just one problem: it was underground.

"And then one day in September I found this huge rock sticking out of a hillside. It was obviously too big to pick up, but it wasn't clear just how big it was and I had to find out."

Kyle concedes that there were easier ways to pull the rock out of the ground that didn't involve a mass effort from friends at a birthday celebration. However, he thought the latter method was much more enjoyable.

"Now, I could have pulled it out with a tractor in like two seconds but what's the fun in that?"

To up the difficulty, he put some other stipulations on the excavation. "I decided we would dig the rock out using only things we found in the woods. No shovels, no picks, just sticks and stones and our lower backs."

At this point in the video, he shows off the handiwork from several party attendees jamming sticks underneath the rock as they attempt to loose it from the dirt.

Adding more layers to the rock excavation, Kyle printed out prediction sheets everyone in the project could fill out to determine how large the rock was going to be. Following this, all of the other guests had to go into the woods to procure a dedicated digging instrument.

Once they did, they went on camera and explained their thought process behind selecting the specific instrument. Kyle says that after making a speech, to his surprise, everyone was all in on the dig. Folks attacked the grass and dirt surrounding the rock in an attempt to exhume it.

"The teamwork vibes were so strong this rock never stood a chance. Eventually we got the back of the rock exposed and we were able to use some good old-fashioned leverage to wrestle the stone free."

Kyle then shows off their completed work and what the rock looked like. It was a narrow slab they were able to remove from the ground.

Afterward, he and his guests engaged in other activities, like "smashing geodes and sifting for gems." Furthermore, he had prize giveaways for attendees, like "a rock tumbler, a Pet Rock, and a DVD copy of the movie The Rock starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage."

In keeping with the rock theme of his party, Kyle shared a screenshot of a playlist he made for the festivities. The songs all had some type of geological reference. "Rock" by Demi Lovato, "Stone" by Alice in Chains, "I Wanna Rock" by Twisted Sister were some of the tracks included in this curated catalog.

Moreover, he put up a cardboard cut-out of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson outside, for guests to admire as they went about their rock-themed tasks.

Every single guest who attended the party and helped unearth the stone also received their own commemorative t-shirt to mark the occasion.

The white shirt included three latin words: "Veni. Vidi. Fodi." Which stands for, "I came, I saw, I dug."

Furthermore, the back of the shirt called the event "Rockfest '25" which was designed to look like a fight poster promising an "ultimate showdown [featuring] Man vs Nature [and] Stick vs Stone."

Kyle called the rock-excavating birthday party "the best [he's] ever had." Even trumping his 30th birthday which he described as a "Viking funeral for my 20s."

To cap off his video, he cited his party as an example for others to refer to if they have a crazy idea they've always wanted to try. Additionally, he said that inviting friends to come and join you can make the experience all the more fun.