Beloved 90-pound tortoise at Grosse Pointe Woods pet shop dies unexpectedly

Franky, the famous tortoise at Lou’s Pet Shop, ran the race of life the way the fable said we all should: slow and steady. The only thing sudden, and unfortunate, about it, was how he died.

"This week, Franky was taken unexpectedly to Tortoise Heaven without signs of illness," the Grosse Pointe Woods store where the relatively young tortoise roamed around with a camera strapped to its shell said on Facebook. "God Rest His Soul!"

The beloved — and longtime — pet shop resident was well-known before the camera.

"He was such a great ambassador for showing what a bond can be between a person and an animal," Donnie Cook, the grieving shop owner told the Free Press on Tuesday, noting that Franky wasn't cuddly, he worked his way into people's hearts. "He wasn't just our pet, he was a community pet."

After the shop added the camera, something Cook called a "little experimental thing," Franky became really famous. In 2014, the New York Times, in a front-page report, noted that while Franky had a potential life span of 100 years, in a digital age, he likely has gained immortality.

We’ll find out, if the Times was right, if the fame Franky achieved in life, becomes even greater after his death.

Within days, hundreds of people have commented on the shop's one post alone, thanking the pet store for sharing Franky's life, recalling fond memories of Franky, and expressing joy for how he brought some to them, and grief, because the tortoise is now gone.

His cause of death and exact age are unclear, but he was estimated to be in his 20s or 30s.

A relentless commitment

In one of Aesop’s best-known fables, "The Tortoise and the Hare," the clever, high-energy hare ridicules the tortoise for his deliberative ways. The two end up in a race. The hare takes off, leaving the tortoise behind, so far that the hare decides to take a nap.

The tortoise, however, keeps going.

When the rabbit awakes, the tortoise has gotten to the finish line first.

The moral of the story, of course, is that determination and relentless commitment to reaching your goal, is better than living life in fits and starts, even if it might not seem like it.

The unglamorous tortoise, as opposed to the quick rabbit, turns out to be the winner.

The Times report was about how folks, back then, suddenly seemed to be filming everything, including the ever-so-gradual and carefree way Franky moved about the store. A tortoise was one of the more unusual things to which one would attach a camera.

"Franky’s fame illustrates the increasing surveillance of nearly everything by private citizens," the Times said in 2014. "Thanks to advances in miniaturization and cheap digital storage, tiny cameras are moving onto houses, people, and nature."

Online, the report also featured a short video of Franky’s movements, which you can see for yourself are slow and steady.

Cherish even small moments

Franky was never supposed to be the pet shop’s mascot.

Even though Franky is a tortoise that spends most of its time on land, he was named after 6-year-old Franklin the turtle, who, in kids' books by Paulette Bourgeois and Brenda Clark, often wears a ball cap and faces life challenges with his best friend, Bear.

A turtle spends part of its life in water.

The books were later turned into an animated series that helped educate young kids. Franky, it turns out, taught his own lessons as well about defying expectations and unconditional love.

Franky was the shop's first rescue animal in 2007. Franky had a genetic disorder that left a divot in its shell and likely weakened its lungs, and the plan was for the sulcate tortoise, which was more than a decade old to stay at the shop for a while — and then go to Florida.

"The community just fell in love with him," Cook said. "He had a cool personality. If a kid walked by, he was almost like a puppy dog, where he would come over and like his head scratched. We couldn't bear the thought of sending him down there."

A "week turned into a month and a month turned into years."

Later, when the shop decided to outfit Franky with a camera, that divot in its shell, turned out to be the very thing that allowed the store to do it. A more domed-shaped shell, Cook said, would have made it nearly impossible to fashion a proper cam harness.

In addition to roaming the shop, the 90-pound tortoise became a feature at birthday parties and school presentations. During shop visits, the kids would look for Franky and greet him like an old friend. The tortoise, the shop said, often "stole the spotlight."

But Franky never complained about his misshapen hump or bragged about delighting kids or fascinating fans or even that time he was in the New York Times. Like the tortoise in the fable, Franky kept plodding along, never giving up, going one step at a time.

"We miss him terribly," the pet shop said in its heartbroken announcement, offering one more lesson that it drew from the tortoise's life: The tortoise was a reminder to us all "to cherish even those most secure and expected moments of our daily lives!"

Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Franky, tortoise at Lou’s Pet Shop in Grosse Pointe Woods, dies