Mikayla Raines’ love for animals was on full display in the last video shared to her Instagram on Sunday, June 22
The clip shows the rescue activist and YouTube star playing with a lemur around her house alongside her husband Ethan
The next day, Ethan announced that Mikayla had died by suicide in an emotional video posted to Instagram
Mikayla Raines’ connection to animals was incomparable.
The 29-year-old fox rescue activist and YouTube star shared a playful video with a lemur on her Instagram, one day before her husband, Ethan, revealed that she died by suicide “a couple days ago” in an emotional announcement posted to her account.
“Do you ever marry an animal lover and you think it’s just going to be cats and dogs, and then they kind of go off the rails a little bit and you’re not so sure what to expect?” Ethan asks in the video shared on Sunday, June 22.
“And they’re calling you saying, ‘Don’t be mad when you get home and you do get home and I don’t know what I’m looking at right now’,” he continues in the clip, which then cuts to Mikayla on the floor of their house playing with a lemur.
“What do you mean he’s nice?” he asks Mikayla, who is shown smiling with the striped-tailed animal on the floor.
The video then cuts to the lemur running and jumping around their kitchen, causing a ruckus in their house. It then begins to eat from a tin of food on the ground.
“So when you’re gone, I even got a net set up for him… and a cage,” Mikayla tells her husband, showing off the elaborate contraption she built in her home, smiling and clapping at her preparations.
The caption of the post reads, “When you’re married to an animal lover, and things get out of hand 🤣.”
On June 22, Ethan announced that Mikayla had died in an emotional video on Instagram.
“She couldn’t bear what she was feeling any longer, and she ended her life,” he said in the clip, calling her death “the biggest loss of my life.”
Ethan shared that he performed CPR on Mikayla for 15 minutes until first responders arrived and paramedics tried to revive her, adding that her daughter, Freya, was “heartbroken” at her mother’s death.
“We have suffered a loss that is unimaginable,” Ethan wrote in the caption of the video. “Mikayla was truly the most amazing and inspiring individual I have ever known, and not having her here makes everything feel empty. I feel broken.”
“As many of you know she was on the autism spectrum and while that made her life very difficult, it allowed her to hyperfocus on one thing, and that one thing was obviously animals,” Ethan continued in the video.
He also noted that the wildlife activist, who garnered over 2.4 million subscribers on YouTube, was “so sensitive to everything,” which was “a double-edged sword.”
Ethan explained that it “allowed her endless empathy for those in her care,” but also “means that she took everything negative to heart.”
Ethan shared that in recent years, his wife and her animal rescue non-profit had allegedly been the focus of an “online bullying campaign” from people she knew, including those who worked at “other animal sanctuaries.”
He said this “hurt her a lot” — and while she initially “pushed through,” things got worse in recent months when people “she considered her close friends” started joining in.
“[Mikayla] felt as if the entire world had turned against her,” Ethan said in part, concluding his video, noting that if anyone felt “lost and hopeless,” they should “reach out to someone.”
PEOPLE has reached out to both Ethan and a contact for Save a Fox for comment.
