Fox’s cell phone tinkled its cascade of musical notes. I was at the computer and Fox was behind me on the couch.
She listened for a moment, and responded, “Yes, this is Fox D-----. Yes, I do work with animals…..”. More words were spoken on the other end, and Fox interrupted. “Wait wait. All I need is the dog’s name at this point. If I want other information, I’ll ask. Sometimes knowing too many facts will taint my reading. Just give me a few minutes. Let me see if I can contact the dog. His name is Mikki? Okay.”
Fox rested the phone on her knee, straightened her posture, and seemed to be staring at a spot about two feet in front of her eyes. Her eyes were de-focused as she loosed her imagination into a receptive mode. Her breathing grew deeper, and there was a tingle of energy in her nerves, as if she had been switched on to some current that now raced through her body.
She picked up the phone. “I see a male dog, very small. A Yorkie, maybe. No, don’t answer me, just let me talk until I’m finished. There’s a fire, and he’s running. The area looks like San Diego, maybe the suburbs. Forest fire, trees burning near this house. His family’s house. There are mom, dad, and two kids, the kids are about nine or ten. Mikki’s their baby, they love Mikki. The fire comes and the parents bundle the kids into the car. They can’t find Mikki. The kids are screaming where’s Mikki, where’s Mikki? But Mikki’s hiding behind a shelf in the garage, he’s so scared. The sounds of the trees burning, the crackle is very painful to his ears. The car pulls out of the garage and Mikki chases after it, gets out before the garage door closes. He runs and runs after the car, and the kids see him, they’re screaming at their parents stop for Mikki, stop for Mikki, but the parents are scared, they don’t stop. The fire is really close. Mikki sees the kids faces, crying as they look out the car’s back window. Mikki runs until he can’t keep up with the car, but he keeps following their scent until he loses it. His paws are bleeding he’s run so far, but the fire is now distant, it isn’t threatening any more.”
I could hear the voice of the person through Fox’s little cell speaker. “Oh my god,” I hear distinctly.
A sheen of sweat coats Fox’s forehead. She speaks with urgency, words come out fast, a torrent of words. “Mikki can barely walk but he’s so thirsty and hungry that he keeps moving. He’s in a place where all the signs are in Spanish. There are a lot of people, crowds walking, and Mikki’s afraid. He stops behind a restaurant or a fast food place and there’s dirty water in a bucket and he drinks it. There’s a dumpster with food garbage, and there are other animals, wild and scary…”
I’ve seen this happen before, but rarely with such elaborate detail. And what a story! It’s like some Hallmark or Disney movie, but Fox doesn't deal in fantasy, she doesn't make up stories. I've learned to trust her, though it took a while.
“A man comes outside and sees Mikki” Fox continued. “He brings bowls with some hamburger and clean water and beckons Mikki to come inside a little fenced area where he can eat without being bothered. He leaves Mikki there and goes back inside. Mikki crawls under some wooden crates and goes to sleep. He wakes when his paws hurt too much. He can barely walk. He stays in this place for a while, until his paws feel a little better. Then some men come and load the crates into a truck, and Mikki hobbles out through the open gate and goes down the road. Some kids see him and one of them catches him before he can hide. He tries to bite but he’s too weak to defend himself.”
Fox stops here and begins to weep. A sound comes from the phone. I can hear the woman on the other end also weeping.
“It’s okay,” Fox reassures. “I just can’t believe how these kids treated Mikki. I’m not going to tell you that. You don’t need these images. They drove around in a car playing loud Spanish music and laughing. They treated Mikki like a toy. Mikki bit and fought, so they tossed him onto a busy street. He just managed to get to safety. He tried to hide behind some barrels, but a man found him and took him with a net on a pole, took him to a place with a lot of dogs barking, a lot of fear. After that Mikki somehow got a lucky break.. He was moved once more to a small kennel. He was treated well and his injuries were looked after.”
Fox slumped, exhausted. Her color was grey. She was breathing hard, as if she had been Mikki and had run all that distance, suffered all those trials. Tears pooled at the point of her chin.
The woman on the phone was speaking. Fox responded. “No wonder Mikki would go nuts when he hears Spanish. Do you hire people who speak English? Can you get them to speak only English? Yes, that would help. Mikki’s not going to like the sound of Spanish.”
She listened for a moment. “Don’t hold that against him. No wonder he bit you when you tried to clean his paws. His paws will always be sensitive.. Where did you find Mikki?”
Fox listened. “So the San Diego Yorkie Rescue got a call from United Hope in Tijuana? Amazing. I can tell how much you love Mikki. Do you smoke? I didn’t want to tell you this, but I guess it’s relevant. Those kids burned him a couple times with cigarettes.”
Fox listened to the answer. “It doesn’t matter. Mikki can’t tell the difference. It’s still smoking. You’ll have to smoke somewhere Mikki can’t see you. Anything to do with smoking will scare him, and he’ll get aggressive. Was everything done to try and contact his original family?”
Fox listened, nodded her head. “You have to do that. You have? That’s good. Maybe they lost their home, who knows? You did your best. Well .now you have Mikki.”
I could hear the effusions from the woman on the phone. She was weeping. Fox was weeping. Every part of the story she had gotten from Mikki could be corroborated. He had been picked up by Tijuana Animal Control. A group called United Hope For Animals was patrolling the kennels when they found Mikki.
The new place was filled with people who cared for Mikki, soothed him and loved him. He had no tags, no collar. His feet were lacerated, and he had cigarette burns on his body. He was nursed back to health, and then a picture of him was posted on the internet. Three months passed with no one to claim him, then he was put up for adoption. That’s when Fox’s new client saw him online and drove to San Diego to bring him home to Northern California.
I can’t explain how Fox achieves these readings, these transfers of information from an animal’s experience into her own. Science scoffs; but I see it happen, I see her readings corroborated time and again. Science is not adequate to encompass such mysteries, so science says, “Impossible.”
Everything is possible. At first I thought Fox had a few loose screws. I thought she was an elaborate fantasist. But she got "hits" time and again, way beyond statistical average. I learned to suspend my disbelief, to trust Fox's abilities.
Sometimes, Fox can describe an animal’s experiences without having met the animal. All she needs is a name or a photograph. What is going on here? This isn’t a television show, this isn’t a gimmick. It happens and it has real consequences. Animals are re-united with their people, pets are healed of old trauma by having a witness. All kinds of strange things happen in Fox’s universe.
All kinds of strange things happen everywhere. Why not here, in my own home?
