Hundreds of children prowled around the Toledo Zoo Oct. 18 donning their favorite Halloween costumes to search for candy during the zoo’s annual Harvest Fest and trick-or-treating event.
Harvest Fest, the zoo’s fall festival, takes place throughout the month of October. The zoo is transformed into a giant fall frenzy with hundreds of pounds of pumpkins, numerous mums and dozens of giant light-up pumpkin displays across the zoo grounds.
“Every year we add more and more mums, flowers and pumpkin displays, and it’s just a really beautiful time to visit the Toledo Zoo here in the fall,” said Jen Brassil, the Toledo Zoo’s director of public relations and communication events.
The zoo has thousands of pumpkins on display, and Brassil said about halfway through October, Brassil said the zoo got another shipment of about 400 additional pumpkins to continue decorating for Little Boo at the Zoo and Pumpkin Path, events that are supplemental during Harvest Fest.
She said the zoo purchases some of its pumpkins through Fleitz Pumpkin Farm in Oregon, Ohio, while others come from another supplier.
Don’t worry though, the thousands of pumpkins do not go to waste when Harvest Fest ends. The zoo hosts their Pumpkin Stomp and Chomp event where the animals eat the leftover pumpkins.
“They really like the pumpkins as enrichment treats,” said Brassil. “Our elephants actually do stomp and chomp them. The hippos do. And then for some of the smaller animals, the keepers will make jack-o-lanterns out of them and fill them with species-appropriate treats, so that’s really fun.”
In addition to the thousands of pumpkins on display, there are several thousand mums and fall plants, too.
“As far as mums and flowers, we have probably close to 5,000 on zoo grounds. That’s a mix of mums and other types of fall flowers you see,” Brassil said.
The zoo grows some of the mums themselves, while other plants are purchased from three different greenhouses in the area.
In addition to real pumpkins, the zoo also has several light-up displays that were created using fake pumpkins made out of a variety of materials.
Ice Creations of Napoleon, Ohio, which created the light-up pumpkin displays, also does all of the zoo’s ice carvings during the Lights Before Christmas.
“I will basically tell them an animal and they will magically make it happen. They do all kinds of carving—sand carving, all of our pumpkin carving and even our chalk art during the art fair,” Brassil said.
Matthew Larsen, a sculptor with Ice Creations, said learning to carve ice and pumpkins takes practice.
“I was first exposed to carving in culinary school, and I didn’t take to it right then. Later on, I went on to make ice carving my primary job, and since then, I have been doing the pumpkins for about five years now,” Larsen said.
Depending on the design and size of the pumpkin, each carving can take several hours.
“For a larger pumpkin, I probably spend two hours, maybe a little more. And then for a kind of small, simpler one, I spend maybe an hour,” said Larsen.
While carving ice and carving a pumpkin are two different skills, Larsen said the two are actually connected.
“There’s definitely different techniques, but there’s definitely overlap between the techniques,” Larsen said. “They both start with tracing on your design, figuring out what you want to carve, and then cutting around it. But we don’t cut it out entirely, we cut around it and cut back, so it looks like it’s popping off the surface, and then we start adding layers, pushing some areas back to make other areas stick out, and then from there it’s kind of just cleaning up and adding details.”
Though pumpkin carving may look difficult, Larsen said he enjoys it.
“It’s a lovely break from our day job. Not that I ever get to stop doing ice—that’s never-ending, but this is a lovely afternoon at the zoo and is usually very relaxing,” Larsen said.
All of the work done by folks like Larsens, Brassil’s and the zoo’s other employees work comes together for events like Little Boo at the Zoo, which was held Oct. 17 and 18.
On Oct. 18 alone, there were hundreds of people attended Little Boo at the Zoo, and the zoo’s main parking lot reached reached full capacity. Brassil said the crowds aren’t abnormal, as nearly 75,000-80,000 people visit the zoo during Harvest Fest each year.
One of those thousands of visitors was Krista Braman, a mother of five who brought three of her children, ages 2, 3 and 6, to trick-or-treat on Oct. 18.
When asked about her favorite part of Harvest Fest and Little Boo, Braman said her kids were loving the character shows.
Although her children had some tough choices to make, they ultimately chose to come out and see their favorite characters.
“They picked today—it was a tough decision because they love Bluey and Bingo, too. But they picked today for Anna, Elsa and Spiderman,” Braman said.
While Brassil said the month-long Harvest Fest takes about two weeks to set up, many of the supplemental lights used during the event are also used during Lights Before Christmas, which zoo employees began putting up in May.
“It’s just a great time. The grounds are beautiful this time of year with the leaves changing, all the different plants, and it’s kind of a cool, crisp air, and the animals are all out and active, so it’s a great time to be at the zoo,” said Brassil.
