Mikayla, the founder and driving force behind Save-A-Fox Rescue, took her life recently, leaving behind her husband and little girl. She was autistic and suffered from depression and borderline personality disorder. She and her people have saved hundreds of animals; many have new homes because of her. Apparently, several “close” friends, combined with some other animal rescues, deluged her with many negative posts about her rescue and handling of animals and her depression sent her over the edge. RIP, Mrs. Raines, you will be missed and not just by the animals whose lives you saved.
This is horrible. I adored her interactions with Finnegan Fox. She and he appeared many times on my Facebook feed.
I have never felt sorrier for another human being as I do for her husband, feeling like he has to give a statement over the Internet — LIKE HE OWES US SOMETHING! Poor man.
Steve Cash and now this?!
Here is his response to this. It is hard to watch.
I first heard about her today but, for the last week or two, Facebook’s been feeding me up fox, opossum and squirrel rescue stories so one of the fox rescues posted a sad farewell for her today and description of her recent ordeals. She sounded like an exceptionally caring and devoted person to both her family and to her animals and it’s a shame and a loss that people weaponized that devotion against her to drive her to take her own life.
OMG, is that the Finnegan Fox girl? I’ve watched those videos many times. What a beautiful and loving person. Such a devastating loss to her family and to the world.
Apologies if this seems like bad form, but how about a chuckle?:
People can get so nasty to people who rescue or interact in anyway with wild animals.
I feel like this, if they come to your place(which maybe was their home first) and seemingly ask for aid, I’m not able to turn my back.
I was shocked to see that video today. I didnt really follow her, but would see a video from time to time. It looked like a nice environment for a rescue/shelter, lots of space and the animals seemed well cared for.
I cant understand how people could drive someone to do what she ultimately did.
There is also a wild bear and animal rescue channel based out of new york I follow a bit. I really hope they arent being harrassed by the same people/groups.
The foxes weren’t wild. They were captive born for the fur trade or surrendered pets. Absolutely unreleasable.
RIP, Ms. Raines
There was, reportedly, a whole ‘snark’ subreddit dedicated to criticising and bullying her. I’m obviously not going to link it in this thread (not much point anyway as I heard the people there are busy deleting their posts/accounts and locking things down to try to cover their tracks - of course the data/evidence they’re trying to destroy is not actually gone).
The rescue I follow the most, Newhouse, posted about her yesterday. Newhouse herself has talked about having to put up with the negative comments on multiple occasions.
I know veterinarians who talk about the high suicide rate in that field just dealing with the bad outcomes. I can’t imagine dealing with that on top of people bashing you all the time.
We need more people like Raines, and more support for them.
RIP.
Oh man, this is awful news. The " Dixiedo fox runs away with my phone. Tries to bury it." video that @burpo_the_wonder_mutt posted was the first time I learned of Mikayla and Save a Fox, when it had been posted in a ‘post a happy, uplifting video’ thread here on the SDMB a few years ago, and I reposted that video in another similar ‘uplifting video’ thread here just a few months ago. I’m not a huge animal video person, but the foxes had really interesting personalities, and she always seemed so relentlessly positive they were good antidote videos to being in a bad mood.
That video of her husband’s response that @Whack-a-Mole posted is indeed hard to watch.
Damn, people can be such assholes. Why would people bully her online? I mean, I know never much of a reason is needed, but her videos were fun and interesting, and as far as I’m aware the work she was doing was good and helpful.
I’m not familiar with Mr. Cash; please inform us. TIA.
Almost anyone can spot an animal in distress; no matter what the naysayers may have posted about her rescue environment, those critters — from the horse right on down to the minx — were just as spoiled as any house pet you or I might have and if any of them were having a hard life at SAF I saw absolutely no evidence of such.
Steve Cash was one of my favorite YouTubers who made the Talking Kitty Cat series. It featured a black cat named Sylvester and also the rest of Steve’s housepets. He made very realistic voiceovers of Sylvester and the other animals by dubbing over natural mouth movements during meows and other vocalizations, and also by adding dialog when the animal’s head was turned or actually absent which added to the realism of the supposed interactions.
And then, Steve killed himself. It was totally unexpected.
As far as I know, no bullying was involved in Steve’s decision to end his life.
I didn’t follow Mikayla very closely, although I am familiar with her videos. I did love watching Finnegan Fox. I didn’t know that fox vocalizations sound so close to human laughter.
How can people be so cruel? It’s disgusting. And so called animal welfare activists too. They should feel deeply guilty and ashamed of themselves.
The posting I read said that she recently made a deal with a fur farm that, if she paid some nominal sum for the cages, they would turn over their 500 foxes to her for free. This put her in the position of having to find homes for 500 animals and trying to place them in zoo, learning centers, rehabilitation, etc. While this was going on, people were constantly criticizing her care, speed, saying that it was wrong to have paid for the rescue animals, etc. This being the internet, of course everyone is a qualified expert with full situational knowledge to tell other people how they should have been doing it. From the sound of it, most of the animals had been placed so it’s not as though she was sitting on five hundred foxes in her basement and delays were based on the logistics of it all, not a lack of dedication, care or effort.
It would be heartbreaking to take on such a task, try to save five hundred lives, be overwhelmed by the sheer difficulty of it all between caring for, feeding and placing all these animals and to have a constant chorus of online garbage telling you that you’re a terrible person who is doing it all wrong the entire time.
Edit: Just to be clear, this is me saying what I read in a post from another rescue center regarding their (imperfect) knowledge and just to add some context to what she was going through on top of her other issues.
It’s a big, wide, wonderful world we live in, isn’t it? 
Thank you for sharing.
The enormity of what she and her crew were accomplishing just leaves me speechless.
Good post, Jophiel, thanks.