Dave Scharf, Centretown News
The Canadian Museum of Nature commissioned the Canadian Ice Carvers Society to sculp a giant stag beetle for Winterlude to promote its ongoing Bugs: Outside the Box exhibit.Standing tall above Winterlude visitors towers a giant stag beetle with its limbs stretched out to its side, glistening as the warm winter sun catches the water melting off of it.
The Canadian Museum of Nature is hosting a variety of activities during Winterlude to promote its ongoing exhibit, Bugs: Outside the Box.
To educate people on the super-powers of beetles, the museum commissioned the Canadian Ice Carvers Society to sculpt a giant, icy stag beetle at Confederation Park. Museum staff will also lead educational activities for children in the downtown park, across from city hall, where visitors can chip at blocks of ice to find plastic bugs frozen within.
Extending about four metres in length, the massive ice beetle was carved by Ottawa’s Jeremy Kuzub and a team of about eight others including CICS members and international carvers in town for Winterlude’s annual ice carving competition.
“There were two to three people working on it at any given time,” Kuzub said.
He believes the sculpture is based on a female stag beetle photographed by museum staff that has become a mascot for the current insect exhibit.
CICS members worked with the museum experts team to interpret the photograph as an ice sculpture design. “They chose to have their mascot realized in ice,” Kuzub says.
John Swettenham of media relations for the Canadian Museum of Nature, says the beetle “looks pretty good.”
But with the warm weather that hit Ottawa in late January and early February, Winterlude visitors weren’t initially able to see the beetle and other ice sculptures at Confederation Park.
“It’s raining so they have to cover everything up,” said visitor Nathan Conze at the height of the warmth on Jan. 31. “We don’t get to see much out here.”
The sculpture, along with many like it, was covered at the time in a reflective tarp.
The ice beetle was supposed to last until the end of Winterlude on Feb. 15. Museum staff said they were hopeful that the beetle would outlast the warm weather.
“He’s pretty big, so it’s a lot of ice,” Swettenham says.
Conze wasn’t too sure. “This winter’s been up and down so there’s no way to really tell.”
Amid warm temperatures, the ice beetle got substantially smaller. “A lot of people aren’t sure if he’s a bug still,” says Swettenham.
Museum staff are scheduled to be onsite at Confederation Park on Feb. 13 to educate and help visitors from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
“Folks will be invited to hack away and get at the bugs in the ice,” Swettenham says. Younger children will also be welcomed to dig for miniature dinosaurs in the snow. The first bug dig on Feb. 6 was very popular.
According to Swettenham, museum staff will be teaching visitors about how bugs survive during the winter. He says that some bugs fly south while others like butterflies will spend the time in a pupa.
The museum is theming its Winterlude events around bugs to promote the temporary exhibit at the Centretown natural history centre which runs until March 28.
Bugs: Outside the Box features large scientifically-exact sculptures of a variety of bugs. “You can see what a bug would be like if it was something more like your own size,” says Swettenham.
The exhibit features live bugs and butterflies, and even some flavoured bugs you can eat, he says. The museum has also organized some educational activities for kids and is screening a 3D movie called Amazing Mighty Micro Monsters.
According to Swettenham, the bug exhibit has already had good attendance. “It seems pretty popular.”