Did you happen to walk by the Lincoln Memorial, Capitol Hill, or White House today and get a fright when you saw a polar bear walking around? Don’t worry, it wasn’t real.

Greenpeace activists spent today running around D.C. with a massive polar bear costume designed to bring attention to the environmental consequences of oil drilling above the Arctic circle. The costume, nine feet long, three feet wide, and five feet tall, needs two people to operate it. Each pair of legs contained a real live person, with the one in front operating a swivel to manipulate the bear costume’s rather lifelike head.

The bear costume, nicknamed Paula, debuted last year in London at a Greenpeace rally featuring Radiohead and the actor Jude Law. The demonstration today, which hit the National Mall, the U.S. Capitol, and finally Lafayette Park and the White House, was the get-up’s U.S. debut, Greenpeace organizer Lauren Thorpe says.

“It’s the largest costume I’ve ever seen before,” says Thorpe, who has operated it the past but left it to her colleagues today. “It’s not that bad but it’s not the ideal situation for me.”

But Paula is about as close to an artificial polar bear as you might see. Thorpe says that while some passersby spotted Greenpeace staffers stepping in and out of the costume as the group moved around the city, it still got a lot of looks.

One way to be sure that a polar bear costume, however uncanny, poses no threat is that its operators can only see a limited field captured by a tiny camera in the costume’s face. “It’s pretty realistic looking, but they’re totally blind in there,” Thorpe says.

But the purpose of the Paula costume is far more serious than a fun walkabout by a polar bear costume. Greenpeace wants President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to push for the United Nations to declare a global sanctuary zone in the Arctic Circle to block oil drilling. Kerry, who sits on the U.N.’s Arctic Council along with diplomats from Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden, is meeting with his counterparts to discuss the matter next month.

“The president has said a lot about protecting the climate but has to really follow through on some of his commitment,” Thorpe says.

Which means, Thorpe says, Greenpeace will be back in D.C. next week to demonstrate outside the State Department. Though the organization will be bringing a marching band and cheerleaders for that rally, Paula the polar bear will be absent.

Filed Under: arctic circle, greenpeace, lincoln memorial, oil drilling, polar bear, white house,