A 15-year-old girl trapped for a harrowing 45 minutes was rescued by Trussville firefighters.

But Darby Risner wasn't stuck in a cave or overturned car or crib. She was stuck in the head of Barney the dinosaur. The big, plush, purple head of Barney the dinosaur.

It's true. And the last thing on her mind at that point was I love you, you love me....

"The head was closing in on me,'' Darby told Al.com. "It was like a stuck-in-a-small-place-and-can't-get-out-panicking."

It all began Sunday night as a joke on her friends. The prank, however, went awry and the joke ended up being on Darby.

Darby and a group of her girlfriends were at a spend the night party after church. While waiting for her friends to come downstairs, she spotted the Barney head which her pastor had bought several years ago at a going-out-of-business sale. Since then, the bodysuit has been lost but members have passed around the Barney head on an as-need basis for whatever reason.

"Darby thought, 'I'm going to scare them when they come downstairs,''' said her mother, Audrey Shannon. "She put the Barney head on and when she sat down on the sofa to wait for them, it dropped. It slipped over her shoulders. When they finally came down, she got up and realized it had dropped so low, she couldn't get it off. It was digging into her."

Her four friends and the parents of one of the friends then tried to get Darby out of the head. It wouldn't budge.

They slathered Vaseline on her arms, but it still was a no-go. "It gave her short little Barney arms since it was nearly at her elbows,'' Shannon said. "It was hilarious. She couldn't see, so they had to guide her."

Darby started feeling a little nauseated and more than a little warm, so that's when they decided to take the rescue efforts up a notch, or five. "I kind of gasped in fear like, 'Oh no, what did I do?''' Darby said.

The family had friends at the Trussville Fire Department so they gave them a call and asked if they could help. The hitch was they didn't want sirens, and firefighters said if they responded to the home, they'd have to run all emergency lights.

So that's when they all piled into a minivan and headed toward the fire station.

Trussville Fire Lt. Vince Bruno, a 33-year veteran, was there when the gang paraded in. "When they walked in, you couldn't help but start laughing,'' Bruno said. "We tried to be professional, and she was a little distraught, but we had to giggle about it."

The firefighters also tried to pull off the head, but their efforts were to no avail. "She's so little that when they lifted the head, it lifted her off the ground so they had to hold down her feet,'' Shannon said. "And with the Vaseline on her arms, they said it was like trying to wrestle a greased pig."

Bruno said ultimately they made some release cuts in the back of the head to relieve the pressure and remove Barney from Darby. "It was such a relief,'' Darby said. "I have laughed about it."

For the firefighters, it was a much-needed respite from the types of calls they usually have to deal with. "That's a first for me and it will probably be the last, but at least I know how to handle it if it happens again,'' Bruno said. "It's something we'll talk about for years to come."