Colleen Grablick
You might’ve seen her face stuck to a traffic light, or taped to a street lamp. Residents, even the Washington Post Tik Tok guy, have been spotting her around D.C., and sharing her on social media. She’s a 4-inch pufferfish, and she’s the city’s newest online celebrity.
Meet Rona, the local pufferfish that’s quickly blowing up Instagram. In the past ten days, Rona’s account has grown from around 200 followers to a fan base of more than 7,200 fans, largely thanks to posters her dad plastered all around the city.
Joe Kogan bought her for $150 from an online exotic fish retailer in late March and keeps her in a freshwater fish tank along with other tropical fish that he got on Craigslist. He’d never been a fish parent before quarantine, aside from a fish he shared with colleagues at his office. And what better time to raise a pet than when you’re required to stay home with it?
“I talked about maybe one day I’ll get my own fish and this and that, but it’s something I wouldn’t have gotten around to without corona,” says Kogan, who currently lives with roommates in Shaw. “So then, I guess we did what everyone else who gets a pet does, and made an Instagram for her.”
A novice in the world of social media marketing, Kogan began researching strategies about the best ways to grow Rona’s Instagram followers beyond the small group of his personal friends and acquaintances. Along with stringing hashtags under posts and keeping up interactions with other fish accounts, Kogan decided to take an a more unconventional, IRL approach to Rona’s digital advertising. He posted physical flyers about his fish’s Instagram around his Northwest neighborhood.
“Help make our pufferfish famous!” the fliers plastered around D.C. read, with a link to her handle, @Ronathepuff, where she calls herself a “finfluencer.” “She is a really good fish and deserves your follow.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/B_yVze_HV3x/
As people began posting photos of flyers they discovered on their quarantined walks, Rona’s following, like her stomach, ballooned. Kogan printed hundreds more flyers, and spent a weekend plastering Rona’s wide-eyed face across several D.C. neighborhoods, from Georgetown to Shaw to Southwest. He says he walked nearly 20 miles.
“The coolest thing I think is that not only do we have followers which is cool, but people really like our posts,” says Kogan. “People say such nice things and they really like our fish, so that to me is so much cooler than having a number of followers.”
Rona is a Mbu pufferfish, a species found originally in the Malagarasi River in Tanzania. In the wild, Rona would be eating shellfish like snails and mollusks, so Kogan has to feed her one live crawfish a week to prevent her teeth from overgrowing. When eating, Rona turns from a cute, big-headed baby into savage predator, an image Kogan wasn’t sure if he should add to her Instagram feed at risk of ruining her brand as a bright-bellied sweetheart.
But that’s where Rona differs from dozens of other notable internet celebs — she keeps it real. And if you can’t accept her at her worst — taking 20 minutes to pick the limbs off a crawfish — you don’t deserve her at her best. (She’s a baby, so she’s still learning how to hunt.)
“People like the cute pictures of her, but she’s also a vicious crawfish destroyer,” says Kogan of Rona’s duality, worrying that videos of her poor table manners might turn people away. “And then I was like, if you don’t like Rona when she’s eating crawfish then you don’t really like Rona, because that’s what she does and that’s how she eats. So I’m not going to hold back her content.”
As her feed shows, there’s more to her personality than killer selfies and eating snacks. She’s cultured (she watched the recent Michael Jordan documentary), up to date on current affairs (she wears a mask), and body positive (she doesn’t shy away from posting on her bad days.)
While she’s only about 4 inches long right now, adult pufferfish, also known as underwater puppies, can grow to be 2 feet long, at which point Kogan says he will need to purchase a bigger tank. In the meantime, Rona’s not trying to get a big head about anything.
“At the end of the day, it is just a fish instagram,” says Kogan.
