A weekend road trip could include all things creepy-crawly, with a stop at a North Carolina museum’s biggest – and buggiest – event of the year.
The annual BugFest at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh includes more than 100 exhibits tied to bugs, some hands-on activities to explore, and entomologists to guide visitors through the intricate world of arthropods. Perhaps slightly more surprising than the scientists, there will also be chefs.
“You can come in and actually eat bugs, said Abby Lewis, who works in public events for the museum. “So, we have chefs invited from around North Carolina, and they cook with, this year, crickets, mealworms, or super worms. This year on the lineup, we have a mac and cheese, we have some cookies, we have some curry.”
Here in the U.S. it’s not all that common to use bugs as a recipe ingredient, but she said that’s not true elsewhere.
Lewis said, “For a lot of cultures, eating insects is very, very normal. Here in the U.S., we are one of the few that don't eat insects as a part of our normal diet.”
She did say reactions to the dishes vary. “We get those who have never eaten a bug before, and you get that shock. Sometimes you get that horror. And then you take a bite and our talented chefs really make it appealing and fun. Sometimes you don't expect that crunch.”
Even unexpected, Abby said a lot of people find that crunch a little more palatable than the squishier bugs.
“I like showing my chefs how to roast insects beforehand, so that you kind of lean into that crunch,” she said, “Because if you just throw them in raw, you're going to have a hard time with them soaking up your flavor and a lot of people find that texture more challenging.”
If eating bugs isn’t your style, you can also take a shot at picking which Madagascar hissing cockroach is faster.
Lewis said, “We call it our Roachingham 5000. They are in a nice, safe, plastic track and we kind of just release them and they walk in a direction and we excitedly wait for them to pick their winner.”
The focus of BugFest this year is on krill -- small, shrimp-like marine crustaceans – as a tie in to the museum’s blue whale exhibit.
“We really loved this chance to highlight krill as an arthropod,” she explained, “Here at Bug Fest, we define the term bug as meaning all arthropods. So that's insects, crustaceans, and so much more.”
The blue whale can eat 16 tons of krill in a day. They can grow up to 110 feet long, weigh up to 400,000 pounds, and have a heart the size of a small car. Visitors to “Blue Whales” will see the enormous skeleton of a recovered blue whale and the only blue whale heart model in the world.
BugFest is on Saturday at the downtown museum from 10 a.m.–7 p.m.
