Aura's Ark is no longer producing pet supplies.

Aura’s Ark is closing.

That feels incredibly strange to write.

This has existed in one form or another since 2018, and for all of my adult life, Aura’s Ark has been where I put everything.

My animals, advocacy, my weird food projects, my art.

Things I built.

Things I learned.

Things I became obsessed with and wanted to tell everybody about.

It was never really just a business.

Aura’s Ark has always been an expression of me.

And somewhere recently, it stopped feeling like that.

I have always run toward the things that need a voice.

I think that is probably the easiest way to explain almost everything I have done with Aura’s Ark.

When I got into hermit crabs in 2018, the community was tiny. Most people genuinely had no idea what these animals needed. If I saw a post about hermit crabs online and wanted that person to know better, I felt like I had to be the one to say something, because there was a very real chance nobody else would.

So I said something. Again and again and again.

And somewhere along the way, thousands of other people started saying something too.

Now I can stumble across a random hermit crab post online and the comments are already full of advocates explaining proper care. Sometimes the community can be a little harsh in the way it educates, but boy does it educate.

Hermit crabs are on the map now.

That makes me incredibly happy.

It happened here at home too.

As a young adult, I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to help exotic animals in the Interior. I was working at Petco, going to businesses, going to people's homes, finding reptile food, ordering bugs, tracking down fish supplies, lights, substrate, whatever somebody needed 

Now we have Northern Exotics!

There are people here doing the work. There are resources. There is knowledge. There is a community.

Fairbanks is covered.

And I am so, so glad.

I have spent a huge portion of my life running toward whatever I thought needed somebody standing beside it.

Animals needed advocates, so I became one.

Animals needed a home, so I always opened mine.

There was a problem, and my instinct was always, “Okay. Then I guess I need to do something about it.”

But I cannot save everything.

And I think I am finally ready to stop trying.

So I want to be very clear about what closing Aura’s Ark means.

I am done with animal products.

I am not rescuing animals anymore.

I am not taking custom animal orders.

I am done making animal food. There will be no more reptile smoothies, hermit crab food, or food projects.

I will not be regularly producing the bridges, hammocks, ceramics, or other animal products that have been part of Aura’s Ark.

I will not be making any more hermit crab activity kits.

I am done.

That does not mean I suddenly stopped loving animals. If you want tell me everything about your pet, I would still love that conversation.

I just do not want loving animals to mean that I am responsible for fixing everything anymore.

Somewhere along the way, Aura’s Ark stopped being the place where I put the things I loved and started becoming a source of immense pressure that I was putting on myself.

It was not even necessarily that there were too many things.

It was that I had decided, somewhere in my head, that I needed to be all of them.

I needed to build the next thing before I had even finished the last one. Everything I became interested in somehow became another responsibility

My family and friends, and people who love me started worrying about me. I became painfully slow. Messages sat unanswered. Projects sat unfinished. Things I genuinely wanted to do, became things I was afraid to look at because I had put so much pressure on myself surrounding them.

You all know this. 

Eventually, things crashed and burned.

I think I want off the Ark now.
At least for now.

I do not know what the future brings, but right now, I want to find out what I make when I am not asking what it needs to become.

I want to make something without wondering whether I should produce twenty of them.

I want to collect food for my own crabs without feeling the pressure of a few gallon bags.

I want to learn something without becoming responsible for teaching it.

And we all know I am not going to simply stop making art.

That would be ridiculous.

So the Aura’s Ark website is not disappearing.

For now, it will remain open.

It will change a lot. But I like having a little corner of the internet that belongs to me.

And whatever strange thing I am making next will probably end up there.

Thank you to everyone who trusted me with an animal, bought something I made, listened to me ramble about hermit crabs, let me build something weird, taught something to me, or just watched this thing change shape over the years.

I am proud of what Aura’s Ark has become. 

And I am incredibly proud that some of the things I once felt so desperate to fight for now have entire communities standing behind them.

Maybe that means I did what I came here to do.