Dead fish found embedded in Russian city’s festive ice sculptures

The city of Tyumen, like many of its counterparts in Russia, marks every holiday season by building a complex of ice sculptures. According to the local outlet 72.ru, this year’s “ice village” features an extra, unintentional decoration: dead fish frozen into the ice.

Local landscaping chief Kamil Kalimullin told 72.ru that the ice used in the complex “is generated under natural conditions” and that the fish present in those conditions were not immediately visible when the ice was cut. However, when the sculptures were polished, they came into view.

Kalimullin said that the contractor hired to create the ice village had cut out all the dead fish by the time photographs of their frozen bodies appeared online.

In 2014, the city of Kirov, which sources its sculptural ice from Tyumen, built an entire icy labyrinth with fish embedded in the bricks.