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Nature center hosting annual butterfly exhibit

| July 10, 2024

Families will be flocking to the Norma Johnson Center over the next 10 days to experience All-A-Flutter's interactive butterfly exhibit. (TuscParks)

DOVER (WJER) – The exhibit offering an up-close look one of nature’s most colorful pollinators is making its yearly visit to the Norma Johnson Center. 

The All-A-Flutter traveling butterfly enclosure will be there for the next 10 days, opening on weekdays from 10 until 4 and from noon to 4 on Saturdays and Sundays. Tusc Parks Programming and Education Manager Marsha Freeland says it’s a summertime tradition that typically draws over 3,000 visitors to the nature center.

“We’re kind of concerned this year, only because 39 is shut down there at the Kimble [landfill]. We won’t have the tourist signs for the butterfly exhibit, but we are still open and we will still be there.”

The exhibit features several species of native Ohio butterflies that you can feed with a Q-tip.

“If you did not know, butterflies taste with their feet. They smell with their antennas, and they drink with this thing called a proboscis, so you’ll be able to see all of those things happening.”

There’s also free face painting, a butterfly-themed craft, and chrysalis kits that you can buy to take home and continue the experience.

“We get them from little children all the way up to the older population, so a wide range because everybody loves butterflies.”

The Norma Johnson Center is between Dover and Sugarcreek at 4033 State Route 39 Northwest. You can get there from the west, by taking the posted detour, or using county roads and your GPS.

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