By Kaya Bogot

Small, 3-D printed terrapins or ‘terps’ appeared around the University of Maryland on Monday afternoon. By 6:30 p.m., students all over campus set out in search of these figures. Many of them were following hints from an Instagram account called @terp_hunt.

In 2022, this account posted for the first time. A picture of a small, red, 3-D printed turtle. Then, a post of a similar turtle sitting on top of a rock tower at an unknown location.

The Terp Hunt founder, who wanted their identity kept a secret to preserve the mystery of the hunt, said they started putting these little terps around campus on their way to class, but after the terps started disappearing, the founder wanted to know where they were going. 

“There had to be a way for the people who are finding them to get back to me,” the founder said.

Thus, Terp Hunt began. 

“My team had started dominating the scoreboard,” said Jwi Brown, a hunter of these terps and a sophomore international relations and sociology double major. 

Terp Hunt has allowed them to indulge in their competitive side and even form a team, Brown said.

“I met some people through it,” Brown said. “It became almost like a team sport. It was like that competition feeling, but also like doing it with your friends.”

Originally, the Terp Hunt founder took a 3-D printing class and acquired a personal printer. The original design for the terps came from the Pokemon “Squirtle.” 

“I found like this model of a Squirtle online, and I printed it out in red, and I was like ‘Oh, this is a terp,’” the founder said.

The founder said what started with one or two people following the account, soon began to grow. The growing number of hunters meant printing more terps. 

“It evolved into more scavenger hunt-y,” the founder said. “How do I take a good picture of this terp so that people might find it later, so people can follow along and actually play the game?”

Then, began the themes. At first, it was different colors, but the founder said the first big theme was a Halloween hunt. For this hunt, the design of the terps was modified, including a cat-terp and a devil-terp.

During the early days of Terp Hunt, the hunts were weekly and sometimes twice a week. As it grew, the founder’s friends also helped hide them. 

“It became a little bit of an obsession for me,” the founder said. 

At this point, around 200 terps were being printed per hunt. The Terp Hunt founder said that each terp takes around 20 minutes to print. They estimated that for 200 terps, it takes about 66 hours to print them all, so they just let the printer run for around three days.

Currently, they estimate that 6,000 terps have been hidden.

Terp Hunt is entirely self-funded, and a single terp costs approximately 5 cents. They’ve also begun transitioning to recycled plastic for printing the tiny terps.

For another Terp Hunt hider, who uses the pseudonym Terpniss Neverseen, Terp Hunt provided them with a motivational outlet.

“Honestly, that was one of my saving graces for finishing up college because I was so drained,” Neverseen said. “Terp Hunt really, really lifted my spirits and gave me something to look forward to.” 

“The ultimate goal was for people and students to interact and explore, to be places that they never maybe thought they would have been,” Neverseen said.

Another terp hunter, Dulce Ortiz, a sophomore criminology and criminal justice major, said that Terp Hunt has become a great way to bond with friends.

“We’ve definitely turned it into this big thing where my entire friend group gets together whenever they have the hunts, and then we just all collectively go look for them,” Ortiz said. 

The founder had set out with Terp Hunt to try and challenge themself, to try and commit to a project and focus on it. By the end of the Terp Hunt founder’s graduating year, they said they had accomplished that.

“We wrapped that semester off with a graduate hunt,” they said. “I was kind of ready to just wrap up the project. It had been a year.” 

But that wasn’t the end of Terp Hunt. Over that summer, people were asking for more. So the founder held a pride themed hunt in June and even held photo contests. The UMD community also reached out asking how they could help.

“It was no longer just me and some friends hiding them, but there were more people to help out with the project,” the founder said.

The Terp Hunt team now has regular meetings and have settled on one hunt per month. With having graduated, the Terp Hunt founder’s role is significantly smaller. Someone else designs and makes the terps now.

There does not seem to be an end in sight for Terp Hunt, in fact, it seems to keep growing. The Terp Hunt Instagram account currently has more than 600 followers.

“Terp Hunt has given me community, and I hope it’s given other people community too,” the founder said.

Featured Image: Terp Hunt hiders place two 3-D printed terps outside UMD’s Administration building during a pride themed hunt. Photo provided by the founder of Terp Hunt