Where do animals go when the world is on fire?

& a resource for getting them back to their people in LA

Where do animals go when their world is on fire?

A few days ago Luca and I were on a flight to Mexico City, seated next to a man from LA, and discussing this very topic.

“It was the weirdest thing,” he told me. “Before the fire, there were almost no animals around.” No birds in the sky, no mammals scurrying about.

They all seemed to know, before the humans did, that trouble was on the way.

“Then out of nowhere, we saw two coyotes absolutely hightailing down the street.”

Anyone who lives on the west side of the North America knows that coyotes don’t run, they mosey. Not even a car will send them sprinting — they’ll trot off calmly, expecting you to wait. But these two animals were, quite literally, running for their lives.

And sure enough, moments later, the fire appeared— rapidly approaching.

Where do all the animals go when the world is on fire?

If they’re wildlife, you hope their intuition directs them to safety.

But what about the pets who were living in the urban and suburban areas affected?

Well, we hope they’re able to make it out of their homes with their families in time.

But the truth is, not all of them have or will.

Imagine this:

You live at home as the sole caretaker of your ailing and disabled mother. Though it’s just the two of you, you’re far from alone, because you have a house full of cats, dogs, and fish that you call family.

When the warning from CalFire arrives in the middle of the night, you look out the window and see the fire rapidly approaching.

You have just moments to leave your home, rolling the wheelchair of your elderly parent.

You can’t find the cats.

You can probably hold the dogs on leash while you wheel the chair, but you don’t have any time or a travel vessel to scoop all of the fish from the aquarium and transport them.

You start scrambling.

Can fish breathe in Tupperware?

Where the fuck is the Tupperware?!

You wish desperately to collect everyone, but if you wait another moment, you might not make it out alive.

You have no choice but to leave the fish and the cats behind.

Without even a chance to cry, you leave the front door open hoping the cats will somehow find their way, and you follow the crowd of your neighbors running for the hills.

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It can be so easy to look at people who leave their animals behind in a natural disaster and say, “How could someone DO that?! I COULD NEVER!”

But as you can see, it isn’t always that simple.

Even animals that are able to evacuate with their owners may end up separated or lost amidst the chaos.

A collection of rescue organizations in LA has created a shared spreadsheet to track animals that have been lost and found in the LA fires.

I was shocked to see the animals included in this list. Puppies and piglets, ponies and kittens, a group of domestics ducks. Even a goldfish in a mason jar, y’all. I shudder to think what they’ve been through and how they survived.

Please share this Google sheet far and wide, and let’s get these animals reconnected with their families.

My heart and prayers to the state of California,

Dr. Sami