Valentine’s Day is fast approaching. For many, Feb. 14 is a day to express love and caring for a partner. For others, it’s a day to stew over relationships that didn’t work out. If you’re in the latter category, then you might enjoy finding a way to insult your ex while also supporting a zoo.
Many zoos offer love-themed programs for Valentine’s Day. My local aquarium, for example, hosts a “That’s A Moray!” sea-themed event for adults on the romantic rituals of aquatic animals. That might be too sappy for some, especially anyone dealing with a recent heartbreak. So how about “Doo Some Good” or “Cry Me a Cockroach” instead?
Name A Rat After Your Ex
The San Antonio Zoo’s Cry Me a Cockroach fundraiser is for adults 18 and over. You can choose from veggies ($5), a cockroach ($10) or a rodent ($25) and have it symbolically named for your ex and fed to a zoo resident. In return, you get a digital Valentine’s card and the grim satisfaction of knowing your ex’s name was consumed by a hungry snake, porcupine, kangaroo or bird. The rodents are pre-frozen and the live roaches are sourced from professional breeders.
Name A Madagascar Hissing Cockroach
The Brookfield Zoo in Illinois has plenty of Madagascar hissing cockroaches. These jumbo roaches are known for their defensive hissing sounds. The zoo will name one of these absolute units after your ex for a $15 donation. Look for the zoo’s unveiling of a naming board on Valentine’s Day sharing the first names of all the honorees. Cockroaches can be for happy people, too. The zoo lets you choose to name the roach after someone special or someone not-so-special.
More Cockroaches
If you want to support multiple zoos or if you have a lot of exes, then you can also participate in a cockroach-naming Valentine’s promotion with the Louisville Nature Center in Kentucky. The nature center will feed your $10 roach to a yellow-bellied slider turtle named Francis.
The Bronx Zoo in New York offers its own $15 cockroach promotion, but takes it a step further with a merch collection that includes a roach beanie or a roach fanny pack. The zoo reminds Valentine’s celebrants that Madagascar hissing cockroaches are fuzzy, hardcore, indestructible, unique and charming. Actually, that’s kind of romantic.
Do The Poo
Cockroaches are popular, but the crawling insects aren’t your only option for appropriately honoring your ex. The Doo Some Good initiative from the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas offers scorned lovers the chance to “ditch the flowers and chocolate this year and opt for something a little more organic.” For $10, the zoo will dedicate a pound of poop in the name of your ex and send you a digital certificate to mark the honor.
The zoo partners with a third-party to compost the copious amounts of waste generated by its animals. Talk about putting the “ex” in “excrement.”
Feed Your Ex’s Memory To A Bear
If cockroaches, rodents and poop aren’t doing it for you, then you can drop $15 on naming a superworm. The Columbus Zoo in Powell, Ohio, will feed the worms to its resident bug-eating sloth bears, Randhir and Heiderose. “Not only will you get a good laugh, but you’ll also be supporting world-class animal care and vital conservation efforts,” the zoo said. The zoo will make a special Valentine’s Day video of the bears chowing down on the beetle larvae.
These naming opportunities are a way to turn heartbreak into humor. It may even be cathartic to send your former flame’s name down the gullet of a hungry animal. That’s more productive than just deleting your sappy text history.
