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. 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. As I stand on the deck starring out into nothing, I hear a woman cry in distress. Yes, I was 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 figured 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. Those of you who paid attention in third grade to Bobby's animal report about foxes know that foxes sometimes make a crying sound. (I didn't pay attention because I was busy watching Jennifer Hedlund twist her new stud earrings again and again since she just got them pierced.) I looked 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 I could get her into the garage, she got loose and ran off into the dark mountain terrain. Last time we were at the vet they accidently gave her two rabies shots - probably a good thing.