Audubon Insectarium crawls up the list of top attractions in New Orleans
Audubon Insectarium crawls up the list of top attractions in New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS — Apparently confident that the levees will hold if another massive hurricane and flood hit New Orleans, officials of the Audubon Nature Institute have opened what's billed as the nation's largest freestanding museum dedicated to insects.
One shivers at the thought of all those cockroaches, spiders and beetles being swept into the nearby French Quarter.
One large jug alone contains 400,000 fiery and hungry Formosan subterranean termites, already the scourge of the South.
Housed in the monumental 1881 U.S. Custom House along Canal Street, the $25 million Audubon Insectarium consists of eight galleries, a theater and a cafe, all of which branch off a broad corridor designed to resemble a civilized Bourbon Street. The project took 15 years to conceive and construct.
"Are those alive? Oh, my God, I thought they were fake," said one woman when she noticed the twitching antennae and scurrying movement of a display case of giant cave cockroaches just inside the museum entrance.
Since the museum opened in mid-June, it's attracted nearly 90,000 visitors, says Sarah Burnette, spokeswoman for Audubon Nature Institute.
Why was New Orleans chosen for the museum? "If any city has had a long and intimate association with insects, it's definitely New Orleans," Burnette says.
Most of the museum's insects are sealed behind glass, both for their own protection and for the benefit of squeamish visitors who fret about finding something creepy crawling across the face of their cell phone.
Not that all insects look intimidating, one soon learns. Despite its scary name, the white-eyed assassin bug looks
as playful as a set of dominoes, its black carapace spotted with white dots. The walking leaf looks uncannily like a leaf that just floated off a tree, from its bright green color to its browned edges and curling tip. The red and green tones of the metallic frog beetle shine with the gleam of a new car. And an aquarium of sunburst diving beetles suggests a water ballet involving trained ladybugs.
There are several opportunities to get up close and personal with bugs, not all of them that charming. Entomologists are stationed here and there throughout the museum to help visitors fondle this and that insect.
Here you learn that the Madagascar hissing cockroach feels just like a well-oiled leather cowboy boot. "I touch them accidentally all the time," quipped one New Orleans resident passing by, somewhat hurriedly.
The most intimate arena for getting acquainted with the insects is the Butterflies in Flight Gallery, a warm and peaceful self-contained Asian garden where visitors can sit on benches or stroll about a koi pond while hundreds of butterflies flit about, sometimes alighting on someone's shoulder.
In contrast, the Terminix Immersion Theater is the giddiest and loudest spot in the museum. Here, the high-definition animated film "Awards Night," narrated in part by Joan Rivers, pays fast tribute to the superstar capabilities of many of the world's insects. But the story line is difficult to follow as the seats caress, jiggle, "sting" and otherwise startle members of the audience.
The most popular exhibit appeared to be the Metamorphosis Gallery, a working husbandry lab where enthralled visitors only reluctantly budge from a display of butterflies emerging from chrysalises.
The museum has several interactive diversions for children, including a game in which they try to see how many toy bees they can manipulate into a hive within 35 seconds.
The signage generally is low enough for children but too low for adults, and some of it is curious. "In some Texas pastures alone, they clear out 80 percent of all cow manure," says a sign on an exhibit of dung beetles. What, there are no dung beetles in Louisiana? Or is this a sly way to suggest that Texas has more, well, dung than Louisiana?
The food of the Tiny Termite Cafe is routine museum fare, though the tables are unusual. As guests eat, they look down through the glass tabletops onto tarantulas, termites and crickets industriously going about their chores.
For some not-so-usual museum chow, there's the adjoining Bug Appetit, a demonstration kitchen where chefs provide cooking lessons with such ingredients as mealworms and crickets which, while not often found on the menus of New Orleans restaurants, do provide protein in other parts of the world.
The museum's reputedly popular "chocolate chirp cookies" weren't on the menu the day we visited, but executive chef Kevin Robertson was whipping up fried wax worms that tasted just like fried pork skin, and nachos of mealworms that were meaty and sweet.
Nothing was as popular, however, as the "crispy Cajun crickets," sauteed in butter and dusted with Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning, a New Orleans staple. Robertson tells the hesitant that they taste just like spicy sunflower seeds, but the consensus in our party was that they tasted more like fried chicken skin.
Other galleries are devoted to the insects of New Orleans, the critters of Louisiana's swamps (along with alligators and catfish), and the world's most impressive bugs (the male horsefly can hit speeds up to nearly 90 mph; the California trapdoor spider is capable of bracing its door against forces up to 38 times its own weight).
The most unsettling exhibit consists of a glass floor over compartments of various kinds of scorpions. You stand, look down, and wonder why you can't find a single scorpion in one of the compartments.
That's New Orleans for you, keeping you on your toes.
What: Audubon Insectarium Where: U.S. Custom House, 423 Canal St., New Orleans Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday Admission: $15 general, $12 ages 65 and older, $10 ages 2 to 12; advance ticket purchase recommended Information: www.auduboninstitute.org, 800-774-7394 or 504-581-4629