This week, I was planning to start sharing the unfolding process that has occurred in the past couple of years that has led me to being a professional intuitive, but while I was spending time with family and friends this week, I had someone ask me about a strange encounter with animals that she and her boyfriend had had recently. The experience was a bit unsettling, so they started Googling, and the next thing they knew (as I understand it), they were a little freaked out at what they were finding.

As they told me the tale, my “witchy woo woo” (as one of my friends calls it) sense began tingling, so I took a few minutes to tap in to what our guides had to say, and I drew an oracle card about it. The impression I got from the very beginning, given my own unusual animal encounters over the years, and my guides, was not at all scary.

Unfortunately, given that we were at a lively party, I didn’t really have the chance to go into this, and in the days since, I have found myself thinking of a lot of things I would have liked to have discussed and explained. So, my dears, you get to benefit. Let’s cover my top recommendations for you after you have a strange animal encounter.

Maybe you’re asking what a strange animal encounter is, so let’s go over that really quick. This is you seeing an animal in your everyday life that is just not in any way, shape, or form part of your everyday life. Or it’s an animal that keeps crossing your path—typically a wild animal, not a pet. Or it can be a meeting with an animal or a type of animal that you often see, but it raises the hairs on the back of your neck or somehow makes every sense turn all the way up to its highest alert.

If you’ve ever had one of these encounters, you’ll know exactly what I mean. In short, if it’s important or weird enough that you took notice and think it has meaning, it does.

Now, probably the first thing you want to do when you have such an encounter is make sure that you know what the animal was. Get as specific in type as you can, as there are sometimes shades of meaning, say, between red deer and white-tail deer, though don’t worry if the best you can get is “deer.” Our guides lead us to the right places when we go searching, and as my mentor has told me, they love using the Internet to bring us the information we need.

Next, look up the assorted meanings that are assigned to this animal by various cultures. The more you research, the more you’re likely to find that cultures all around the world have the same or similar interpretations of animal significance. But sometimes, they differ in some key ways. Remember I mentioned that our guides will lead us to the information we need? It’s important for you to review the information about animal symbolism and see what resonates with you. This is particularly important when there is a lot of differing information out there. Your guides send messages in ways that will hold meaning for YOU. So, if you tend to identify more with Celtic beliefs than Native American of any description, the animal messenger that appears in your life is more likely to be significant in Celtic traditions, or the message for you brought by this animal is more likely to be from the Celtic interpretation than a Native American interpretation.

So, as is so often the case when it comes to “witchy woo woo” stuff, follow your intuition. Let your gut be your guide. Go with what resonates for you.

That leads me to point three, which is to lean in to your intuition for this. If you have found a ton of information and it all makes your head spin, ask your guides for help and/or meditate on the situation. If, as sometimes happens, you have found conflicting information about the symbolism for a particular animal, ask your guides for help and/or meditate on the situation. If you have some sort of an oracle around, consult it.

This is what I did at my family gathering that day, when things were too hectic for me to go through my usual process of tapping deeply in to communication with my guides—I quickly drew a card from an oracle that is attuned to me through much use. It confirmed the initial feelings I got when I was told about the situation.

Finally, you can ask your guides for further insight/clarification/assistance. If you think you know what the message was but just aren’t sure, ask them to give you some sort of clarification. For example, “Okay, team, here’s what I think you’ve been trying to tell me. If I’m correct, please make this happen again in the next 3 days,” or ask your guides to have some person randomly give you a similar message. Or you can ask an intuitive you know (professional or not).

So, all in all, go with your gut. Your guides talk to you in a hundred different ways every day, and really weird encounters (animal, vegetable, mineral, or otherwise) are usually meant to catch your attention because you haven’t been listening to those hundred small ways. Probably, you know what that weird encounter meant, but you just don’t want to admit it to yourself for some reason or another.

And don’t let “Dr. Google” weird you out—remember, almost anything can be interpreted in almost any way. Googling the significance of a certain animal is not as helpful at interpretation as the context. If a cardinal appears in your life, it may have a different meaning for you than it would for me, depending on how it shows up, my belief system versus yours, and half a dozen other things.

Always go with your gut.