Big Blue Bug

Providence, Rhode Island, United States

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Animals and creatures

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

Nibbles Woodaway, the Big Blue Bug, is a 58-foot-long, 9-foot-high termite sculpture on the roof of the Big Blue Bug Solutions building beside Interstate 95 in Providence, Rhode Island, put up in 1980.

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Big Blue Bug

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Site-level location · 41.8071° N, 71.4058° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

According to the Boston Globe, Rhode Island's holiday season begins when a 58-foot termite is switched on. The Big Blue Bug, also called Nibbles Woodaway, has perched atop the Big Blue Bug Solutions pest-control building above Interstate 95 in Providence since 1980, and in late November 2025 the company held the 33rd annual lighting, live-streamed on its Facebook page.

According to the Boston Globe in December 2025, about 250 people watched singer Jeffrey Osborne flip the switch on strings of white lights wrapped around the bug. The company's chief executive, Brian Goldman, told the paper that his father put the bug up in 1980 and feared people would call it an eyesore. Goldman said it is 9 feet high, weighs 4,000 pounds and is 928 times larger than an eastern subterranean termite.

The bug was meant to be purple. Goldman said that swarming termites look purple under a microscope, but the sun kept fading the paint to blue, so his father eventually kept it blue. Traffic reporters began describing I-95 backups as stretching "to that Big Blue Bug", and the company, founded in 1935 as the New England Exterminating & Fumigating Co., took on the name in 2012, becoming Big Blue Bug Solutions.

Visit Rhode Island's travel guide says the bug is claimed to be the world's largest artificial bug and that it is dressed through the year, including for Independence Day, Halloween and Christmas.

Because it sits on a working business, it is a roadside sight. Visit Rhode Island lists it near Exit 19 (Thurbers Avenue) on I-95.

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PRACTICAL

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WHAT TO EXPECT

A roadside landmark atop a working pest-control business, best seen from I-95 or nearby streets. The company holds an annual holiday lighting, and the 33rd was live-streamed in November 2025.

ACCESS

Atop the Big Blue Bug Solutions building beside I-95 in Providence, near Exit 19 (Thurbers Avenue). It is a working business, and the bug is seen from the highway and surrounding streets.

COMMUNITY

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Find another Big Thing nearby

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Red Hot Potato (Day-O-Lite)

Warwick, Rhode Island

Red Hot Potato is a fiberglass Mr. Potato Head statue outside Day-O-Lite, an LED light manufacturer on Chestnut Street in Warwick, Rhode Island. WPRI reported in November 2024 that it is one of the 6-foot figures from the state's 2000 'Birthplace of Fun' campaign.

Characters and mascots

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6.7 km away

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