Despite its frosty winters, New England is no stranger to gargantuan insects. There’s a big bee in Vermont. A titanic termite in Rhode Island. And this past spring, artist Nathan Walker built a seven-foot-tall, 600 pound ant out of scrap iron and steel and placed it in downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Although the citizens of Portsmouth embraced their metal-mandibled mascot, Nathan is obligated to take it down on September 26. He hopes to sell it, and he wants the ant to have a good home. “I live in an apartment,” he told us. “I don’t have a yard. I don’t even have closet space.”
It’s rare that any giant insect becomes available to the public, and it’s even rarer to find a big bug that doesn’t look as if it would suck you dry for breakfast. “Some people said I should look into selling it to an extermination company,” Nathan told us, “but I thought that went a little bit against my original idea of love between people and insects.”
