The egg hatch was a fun feature of the Iceworm Festival beginning in 1966, when the first “egg” was frozen and displayed in a downtown store window to melt and “hatch” a baby Iceworm! The lucky person who guesses the hour and minutes of the hatch receives a $100 savings bond.
A barrel is soaked to make it watertight then a baby Iceworm is carefully attached and suspended inside with a cord that leads to a trigger. Filled with water and frozen the “egg” is removed and as it melts the cord eventually triggers a clock when the Iceworm melts free of the egg and officially hatches. Longtime Cordovans Al Fulton and Jerry Bendzak, among others, worked on freezing the egg each year.
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