Last nights of holiday wonder for the brains behind Zoolights

Dennis Parkhurst’s legacy includes a giant Pacific octopus, Christmas trees with faces and an enormous tiger head, all of which are brought to life each year with hundreds of twinkling lights.

His newest piece, an 8  1/2-foot red rock crab, will debut Friday when Zoolights opens at Tacoma’s Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium for its 28th season.

The popular holiday event continues to grow with 600,000 lights, 18 scenes and 270 figurines.

Parkhurst, 65, was hired as a carpenter in 1996 and is hanging up his tools in August, making this his last show.

He took on the task of designing and building the crab display like he has all the others — a test of creativity.

“I like having autonomy in how I go about things,” Parkhurst said. “I’ve always enjoyed art. Part of construction and remodeling is envisioning things.

“I enjoy puzzles and when you give me a challenge — put an octopus on top of the aquarium — I’m intrigued.”

The orange and white crab and its moving pincers join the octopus atop the North Pacific Aquarium.

Parkhurst arranged the rock crab — he frequently fishes for the real thing — in a defensive position because octopus enjoy dining on them.

Other new displays this year include a Sea Life scene featuring jellyfish, sea horses and stingrays, and giant saguaro cacti blooms lit up in a real cactus bed near the entrance.

A trio of orcas has been added beneath the Tacoma Narrows bridges and staff members enhanced the aurora borealis with sheets, fans and brilliant lights to give the illusion of lights moving.

Fan favorites such as Mount Rainier, the purple and green Flame Tree, and swooping eagles return.

Chris Boustedt, who has coordinated Zoolights for five years, said he was impressed by how Parkhurst designs and engineers the displays off the top of his head.

“He envisions it in his head and makes it a reality,” Boustedt said. “He makes Zoolights better each year.”

Parkhurt’s first project was to create mischievous trees with eyes. There were disco trees and scary trees, all built with plywood as was typical in the first decade of the lighted show.

After that, he was hooked.

Brainstorming and building Zoolights displays became one of his favorite tasks but it was far from a full-time gig. Parkhurt also repairs exhibits and builds structures on zoo grounds.

He and his team put together the Eye-to-Eye Shark Dives tank, made numerous improvements to the Wild Wonder Outdoor Theater and refurbished aquarium exhibits.

Co-workers lauded his dedication, saying he always took the time to explain projects to visitors who stopped to watch him at work.

“He’s the kind of person who’s an ambassador for the zoo,” operations manager Stan Chapin said. “We’ll miss that when he retires.”

Parkhurst said he’s ready to retire. His body aches from the manual labor and he’d like to travel more with his wife.

He still has ideas never brought to life among the lighted displays and hopes one day he’ll see them when he brings his grandchildren to Zoolights.

Parkhurst envisioned a giant snake’s mouth placed around a pathway so people would have to walk through the jaws.

“It’s fantasy but I think about that kind of stuff,” he said. “You have to step beyond the norm here.”

This story was originally published November 24, 2015 at 3:09 PM with the headline "Last nights of holiday wonder for the brains behind Zoolights."