Mammoth hunt

By CHERYL SCHWEIZER

Staff Writer

MOSES LAKE — They’re out there. Somewhere. No, no, not aliens – the furry little mammoths that are part of the Moses Lake Museum and Art Center 2016 fundraiser.

The money raised goes to the museum’s education and community programs, said director Freya Liggett. Activities funded though those programs include Free Family Saturday and the museum’s lecture series.

Fundraisers are part of the “Feed the Mammoth” program, inspired by the museum’s life-size metal sculpture of a mammoth skeleton. It’s mammoth in every sense – ancient mammoths stood about 14 feet at the shoulder.

The little fuzzy stuffed mammoths aren’t 14 feet tall. But, Liggett said, they’re feisty. “These little guys have been getting into some family-friendly trouble around town.”

The mammoths are the subject of a continuing story on the museum’s social media. The story goes that they got into the museum’s Halloween candy, and it turns out candy has an unfortunate effect on prehistoric mammoths (and their modern stuffed counterparts).

The mammoths made a run for it, documented in pictures on the museum’s social media pages. “And we have not seen them since,” Liggett said.

It’s not that they’ve disappeared. “They’ve been popping up in different places around town,” all captured and posted on the museum’s social media.

All that candy made them hungry, she said, so they’ve been looking for a snack. That’s where the second part of the mammoth adventure comes in.

Museum officials prepared a passport, available at the museum, 401 South Balsam St. Participants are asked to record what the mammoths had to eat their stops (one or more), all detailed in the videos, then return the passport to the museum by Dec. 17. A winner will be drawn from among the returned passports, with the prize a iPad Air tablet given to the museum by an anonymous donor.

The passport hunt is open “to kids of all ages,” Liggett said. The winner will be chosen Dec. 20.

The mammoths went to a Moses Lake City Council meeting – Mayor Todd Voth’s stuffed mammoth buddy even had its own cowboy hat. They are restricting their travels to Moses Lake Parks and Recreation sites, the better to show people what recreation the city has to offer, Liggett said.

So far they’ve visited the Larson Ice Rink and Neppel Landing, gone ice skating and bike riding, poked their trunks into the ice rink’s maintenance room, and snacked on – well, it’s all there in the videos.

Liggett said she got the idea at a conference, where a fellow museum director talked about using a scavenger hunt as part of a fundraiser. The only possible drawback was that the Moses Lake museum’s fundraiser was in November and December, when it’s a little cold to be out hunting mammoth. So “ours is all digital,” Liggett said.

Not all the mammoths got away – some are for sale at the museum for $12.50 and $24, depending on the size.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.