Fungi the Dolphin killed in Lightsaber accident

A freak laser-sword incident has resulted in the death of an Irish celebrity dolphin. Fungi, a mammal who frequents the waves around Dingle Peninsula, was eviscerated last weekend on the final day of shooting in Irish waters for the Star Wars franchise.

The tragedy – involving actors shooting the greatest space fantasy of them all, undermined by mediocre prequels – took place off the coast of Shkellig Vickle, an island some seven miles from the Irish mainland, where the Star Wars cast and crew had established themselves for a number of weeks.

Fungi the Dolphin – by all accounts a very popular attraction amongst tourists and locals around Dingle Peninsula – was slashed apart by an “eight-bladed lightsaber”. The weapon – an Octosword - is said to have been spinning above the water when it struck the sea mammal, which had leapt unexpectedly out of the sea in greeting shortly after the arrival of the boats containing actors and Irish extras – many of them homeless – in Jedi and Sith costumes.

“The dolphin back into the water with him, so he was, only quarthered into three parts,” a local pollock fisherman claimed. “But twas an accident for sure. I love this Star Wars crowd. They’ve been good to us.” The old fisherman – revealed to be homeless – was seen in Dingle hours after the accident, attempting to sell dolphin meat at a fishmonger’s.

The weapon responsible for the attack is one of three “real” lightsabers used by the Star Wars production. The Sith tool is believed to have continued on over the water until it struck the engine of a barge used by the crew, from which a number of people and props were transferred to a skiff being employed by the actors before the larger craft was consumed in an explosion. Two droids were pushed into the water, to be later picked up by an Irish coastguard helicopter using magnets.

Voice actor and puppeteer Mr Frank Oz, 71 – famed for voicing Master Yoda, as well as the Muppets’ Fozzie Bear and Miss Piggy – had been trapped in a cumbersome Hutt costume. According

to local authorities, Oz was the last member of the crew to be located, as he floated into Cork Harbour “under his own steam, and fair play to him an’ anyway” in what became, for Oz, a huge “slug-like life preserver” yesterday morning, very near to where the Titanic made its final port of call before sinking.

Location shooting has since moved to a disputed region of North Africa, where director JJ Abrams intends to reduce the need for CGI by filming desert crowd scenes of a destitute people in dire need of rescue in an actual sandy landscape.