Animal Reports Really are Important

I am home without Glenn. It is late at night. Our dog, Hermey, starts barking like crazy. It is a different bark than usual. She is practically hanging herself on her leash because she is pulling so hard on her rope. I get concerned. I turn off all the inside lights so I can see out there better. Across a patch of trees in our back yard there is a red fox. It is frozen and starring at the dog. The dog is still going mad. I decide the barking must stop. I've heard that if you make yourself look bigger than you are (never a fun thing for a woman to do) that animals can be intimidated. I burst out onto our deck in my best football line-backer stance in hopes the fox will scamper off to it's home. because I am in the light, all I see is thick darkness beyond the trees. I know something is still there because the dog is incessantly barking. Hermey is trying to tell me something. Was there something more?As I stand on the deck starring out into nothing, I hear a woman cry in distress. Yes, I am certain. It was very clear. This is not a good sign for another woman standing alone in the dark so I do what any good Samaritan wouldn't do and I run for the house. My fight or flight mechanism kicked in and there was no stopping me. I figure if I could just survive long enough to get inside then at that point I could figure out how to save that poor woman. So I slammed the door behind me and locked the deadbolt. (Kids are still sleeping soundly and have no clue of the chaos that is beginning to form around them.) I rush to a window that is closer to the cry and then I realize that the cry now has a bit of a barking quality to it. Remember the animal reports that most of us did in 3rd grade, will apparently I wasn’t paying attention when the fox was presented because I was unaware that their bark can sometime sound like a cry – would have been useful information at this time in my life. I look up online to see what I could learn about red foxes. "Often carriers of rabies..." Yikes! I went out to try to bring Hermey into the garage before there was a brawl and a reenactment of the last scenes of “Old Yeller”. Before I can get her into the garage, she gets loose and runs off into the dark mountain terrain. I stand there helpless as her barks run into the distance. My comfort is that when we were at the vet a few weeks ago they accidentally gave her two rabies shots - probably a good thing.