The Day Foxi Stole My Money
The Day Foxi Stole My Money
Living off-grid teaches you to solve problems differently than most people. When your home is parked in the middle of the forest and anyone can walk by while you're away, you start thinking creatively about security. A few years ago I decided the safest place for my emergency cash wasn't in my trailer at all. It was underground. Throughout the summer I buried three sealed pods in different locations around camp. One held $2,000. Another held $1,200. The smallest contained $500. I carefully hid them beneath dirt, leaves, and pine needles, convinced I had come up with a foolproof system. For months everything worked perfectly. Then winter arrived. In early November a snowstorm rolled across Arizona's Mogollon Rim and dumped about 6 inches of snow on the forest. Once the storm passed, I decided it was time to retrieve some cash and make a supply run into town. I grabbed my shovel and headed toward the location of the smallest pod. As I approached, something immediately looked wrong. The ground was torn up. At first I just stood there staring. My stomach dropped. There was a hole exactly where the pod should have been.
I knelt down and started digging through the snow, hoping I was mistaken. Maybe I had remembered the location wrong. Maybe I was a few feet off. But deep down I already knew. The pod was gone. For several minutes I searched the area in disbelief. Eventually I walked all the way back to camp, grabbed my metal detector, and returned to the site hoping for a miracle. The detector confirmed what I didn't want to believe. The pod had disappeared. Now I had a choice. Accept that I had lost $500, or follow the tracks. Thankfully the fresh snow had preserved every footprint. So I started walking. The tracks led through the forest, weaving between trees and crossing small clearings. Along the way I found several other places where something had dug into the ground, likely recovering food caches buried months earlier. That's when I realized who my thief probably was. Foxi.
For nearly two hours I followed the trail through the snow. I considered returning to camp for my GPS so I could record the route before the tracks melted away. Then, just as I stopped to think about turning around, I spotted another freshly dug hole. I walked over and looked inside. There it was. My pod. I don't know if I've ever gone from panic to relief so quickly. The container had clearly been chewed on and dragged through the woods, but the money was still inside. Foxi had stolen it. And somehow I had gotten it back.
After recovering the pod, I decided to check my other cache locations. As I approached the spot holding $2,000, I noticed another set of familiar tracks entering the area. The tracks passed directly through the location where the money was buried. My heart stopped all over again. Fortunately, Foxi hadn't dug there. Not yet.
But judging by her behavior, I was convinced she knew something was hidden underneath the snow. That evening while giving her treats, I held up the chewed remains of the container and informed her she was a very bad dog. She looked completely unconcerned. Truthfully, I wasn't even angry. I was fascinated. Think about it. She had located a sealed container buried beneath roughly a foot of dirt and snow with incredible accuracy. She dug directly where it was hidden and carried it away without any help. That's impressive. The next day I decided to run an experiment. Using one of my spare containers, I wrapped it with a piece of an old T-shirt and wrote: "To Foxi and Boyfriend." Then I buried it as a test.
If she was really finding these containers by scent, I wanted to see what would happen. A few weeks later I checked the location. The test pod was gone. Foxi had found it too. At that point I admitted defeat. My underground banking system had officially been compromised by a fox. I eventually switched to using a large military ammo can instead of small containers. Surely that would solve the problem. Or so I thought. Not long after burying it, I returned to inspect the site and found fresh digging around the area. Foxi was back at work.
I checked her test pod location again. Gone. No sign of it anywhere. This time I couldn't find the trail. All I could do was wonder. Maybe I would stumble across it someday. Maybe it was gone forever. Or maybe, just maybe, she'd bring it back.
Time passed. Winter turned to spring. Spring turned to summer. Eventually I stopped looking for Foxi's pod altogether. Life off-grid has a way of constantly presenting new challenges, and after enough months went by, I assumed it was gone for good. Then one morning, sixteen months later, I stepped outside my trailer and immediately noticed something sitting in camp. At first I didn't recognize it. Then I walked closer. It was the piece of fluorescent yellow T-shirt I had wrapped around Foxi's pod. The same piece I had written on months earlier: "To Foxi and Boyfriend." After sixteen months in the forest, it was dirty, faded, and weathered, but there was no mistaking what it was. Somehow it had found its way back. I stood there staring at it, trying to come up with a logical explanation. Maybe an animal dragged it. Maybe the wind moved it. Maybe it had been sitting nearby all along and I simply never noticed. Or maybe Foxi decided she was done borrowing it. Whatever the explanation, the timing felt impossible. Of all the places in the forest where it could have ended up, it appeared right outside my trailer. I kept it. Today it hangs on my wall as a reminder of one of the strangest adventures I've ever had living off-grid. People sometimes ask why I spend so much time around wildlife. Moments like this are the reason. The forest is full of mysteries. Most of them never get answered. And honestly, I think that's part of what makes them worth remembering.
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