LONGVIEW, Texas — When you walk into the Longview Animal Care and Adoption Center, you may notice something a little 'strange'. The center is doing a promotion in hopes of getting more animals adopted.
“Every fall, we look for opportunities to find ways to boost our adoptions,” said Chris Kemper, animal services manager.
“One of my staff members came and said you know, Stranger Things is blowing up, I think we could turn our Halloween theme into a Stranger Things theme this year.”
The center decked out with characters and scenes from the hit show has led to an uptick in adoptions.
“With our promotion that we’ve built around Stranger Things, we've been able to adopt probably double the number of animals we normally would this time of year,” Kemper added. “In our first week, this October our first week, we marked 79 animals out the door.”
The animal shelter, along with its display, started getting a lot of attention on social media.
“Just a tremendous number of shares just exploded online and on Facebook and we saw people tagging the cast members,” Kemper said.
The numerous tags and comments got the attention of Hendrix Yancey, who plays 13 on the hit popular Netflix series.
Yancey sent a direct video to the shelter to not only recognize the center’s display, but joining in on its efforts to find the animals a forever home.
“It’s just kind of incredible, we were literally kind of giddy when that happened,” Kemper said. “The fact that they are willing to donate their time to help in an attempt to help us promote what we're doing and help us promote our event at the end of the month and help us promote getting adoptions is awesome.”
The center plans to have a trick-or-treating event called the Upside Down Walk Around on Saturday, Oct. 29 from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
The center has invited all the local vet clinics in Longview in a collaborative effort in bringing the community together and to distribute Halloween candy.
Nine vet clinics will be in attendance with a table set up to hand out candy. The event is free and open to the public.