The Louisville Nature Center is looking to get resident yellow-bellied slider Francis a bigger tank.
In exchange for donations, center officials will let people name a roach after their ex and get a video of Francis taking a bite of them.
Louisville Nature Center executive director Rebecca Minnick brought the idea to a staff meeting recently, but it had been in her mind for a while.
“I had an idea like this a few years ago, and then I had seen like a zoo somewhere, I think in England doing it was like, ‘Okay, I guess we can do that,’” Minnick said.
Now, people can name a roach after someone for a $10 donation, and the Nature Center will send them a video of Francis eating the insect proxy.
The raised money will go towards getting Francis a bigger tank.
“There's a size recommendations based on [the turtle’s] size,” Minnick said. “We know that he needs a tank about twice as big … we actually care about the quality of life of the animals that we have here, so we want to follow best practices in regards to that.”
Francis came to the nature center during the pandemic. The space doesn’t take in rescues, but he was a special case.
“He was rescued from an animal hoarding situation. He was in a tank that hardly had room for him to move around,” Minnick explained. “He had no basking light, so he had really bad shell rot, and was just very ill, so she brought him here, and he's recovered from his shell rot, and he certainly has a basking light now, and he has a lot more space.”
Minnick said on nice days, staff will take Francis out to walk around in the sun or take a dip in the pond.
Francis and the nature center’s other indoor residents, like box turtle Chocolate and a corn snake aptly named Corn Flake, help give visitors an up close look at animals.
And that connection to nature is part of the Louisville Nature Center’s larger goal.
“I really think anyway that people connect to nature, there's no wrong way to do it, unless you're like littering or destroying things,” Minnick said.
She hopes the fundraiser alongside getting Francis a bigger tank will get more people familiar with the nature center.
“A lot of people say, ‘Oh, I had no idea the nature center was over there,’ but we're growing and seeing more and more people every day from all walks of life,” Minnick said.
