POULSBO — Kristan Franzen still remembers the day Mr. Ruby the octopus reached a tentacle out of his tank and let her pet him.
Just one of a number of magical encounters the Poulsbo youngster has had at the Marine Science Center in the more than six years she’s been a regular visitor.
And now, she’s hoping that another octopus will work some magic of its own for the center. Kristan’s currently marketing a T-shirt she designed to help raise money for the center, which announced last month it was in dire financial straits. And so far, this little person has made a big difference in buoying the MSC’s hopes for the future.
At 8 years old, Kristan is the MSC’s youngest volunteer — and she’s been at it for the last two years. Once a week, she and her mother Annette feed each and every one of the sea critters in the center’s many touch tanks.
“When she first started, they were pretty skeptical she’d keep up with it but she did,” Annette said.
The Franzen family has seen first -hand the value of a place like the MSC. The mother and daughter have visited the facility two to three times a week since Kristan was about 18 months old. And though the little girl is learning disabled, she has excelled in discovering all sorts of facts about marine animals and their surroundings.
“She knows all the names of all the animals and we feel it’s something she’s really good at and her teachers encourage that,” Annette said.
Kristan said the thing she enjoys most about the MSC is that, “They have animals,” especially her favorites the small, eel-like gunnels in the touch tanks. Her work at the MSC has inspired her to want to be a veterinarian when she grows up — that, or move to Australia and work with Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin at his zoo.That’s why when Kristan heard last month that the Marine Science Society, one of the entities that runs the MSC, was in need of more money, she jumped into action.
“She said, ‘We’ve got to raise some money for them,’” Annette recalled of her daughter’s first reaction to the center’s troubles.
In just a matter of weeks, Kristan designed a T-shirt that depicts an octopus and says “Poulsbo Marine Science Center.” The picture is taken from a book about octopuses that she created for a project at Odyssey School on Bainbridge Island, where she attends classes.
The shirts, being printed by Poulsbo’s Tuna Graphics, will be available at the MSC’s gift shop after July 12 but already Kristan has taken pre-orders from family and friends for about 45 shirts. Those sales, combined with outright donations folks have given her for the MSC, total about $800 she’s raised in less than one month’s time.
“If we could just get the community and the community businesses to come close to matching what Kristan has done, what a success we’d have on our hands,” MSC Board member Tom Nordlie commented this week after receiving the preliminary donations from the Franzen family. “She’s quite an asset to this facility.”
