“Fearful Symmetry” is episode eighteen of season two of The X-Files.
The episode opens at night at the Idaho Mutual Insurance Trust in Fairfield, Idaho. Two janitors are cleaning the place, then the floor starts vibrating and there is a noise that sounds like heavy footsteps. The window of the place shatters and, on the street, a car is crushed, another is shoved out of the way and various other things are damaged. Apparently by something large running – something large and invisible. Out of town, a road work crew hears something similar and things are knocked out of the way before one of them is sent flying and badly injured.
In the morning, a trucker suddenly sees an elephant running at him out of the fog. He brakes and the elephant passes. Later, the elephant is lying in the middle of the road on its side, with a crowd around it.
Scully is questioning the janitors, who tell her they saw nothing. Mulder climbs out through he broken window and says that the security camera didn’t catch anything either. The construction worker was killed, with an abrasion on him in the rough shape of an elephant’s foot. Scully says that, if the elephant did this, someone would have seen it. Mulder’s retort is that if someone had seen it, they wouldn’t be here. The damage to the car wasn’t done by another vehicle. He’s willing to admit a tornado could have done it, but it’s not tornado season. Or perhaps a black hole passing over, but it’s not black hole season either. As for an invisible elephant; Mulder once saw David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear.
Ed Meecham from the local zoo arrives; the elephant is dead, she ran herself into exhaustion. Her cage was still locked up tight. Mulder wants to know if there were any problems with her; elephants are big, wilful animals and problems are expected. Meecham tells them to talk to Willa Ambrose, a naturalist who was brought in to oversee things. Regarding the damage on the street; sure, an elephant could have done that.
Willa Ambrose is told my Mulder that they aren’t trying to place blame; they just want to know how an elephant escaped and was found 43 miles away. Only she and Meecham have the keys. Elephants aren’t good jumpers either, she says to Scully’s look at the cage. Scully was actually thinking it’s a bit small. Which it is. It was built in the 40s; Ambrose was brought in to expand and create more human environments. She suggests they look into the W.A.O.; a radical animal rights group that Mulder has heard of.
The W.A.O. are met at the construction site. There are two of them; the talker, Kyle Lang, didn’t approve of the elephant being in the zoo. Lang says they weren’t involved in breaking the elephant free, because it endangered her and was against everything they believe. He claims Meecham is torturing the animals and, back at their place, has video to show this. Lang says that Ambrose is too preoccupied with a court case regarding a lowland gorilla named Sophie that she rescued and the Malawi government now wants back.
Scully things the W.A.O. could be behind this. Mulder doesn’t, and suggests she watch them. He’s going to talk to the animals. That being Byers and Frohike by video; Langley has issues with bouncing his image of a satellite. The area is apparently a major UFO hotspot, animals have disappeared without a trace and no animal at Fairfield Zoo has ever brought a pregnancy to term.
Scully is watching the W.A.O. and sees the other one head to the zoo. She calls Mulder as the man is about to climb over the fence and follows. Scully bumps int Meecham and Mulder arrives outside. The man is filming when the animals start acting up. There’s a bright light and the tiger he was filming has disappeared from its cage. Its disappeared from sight, too, but still seems to be there, and his camera catches him being attacked by something invisible.
Lang denies knowing anything. Mulder took a look at the recording and tells Scully nothing killed the dead man. He wants to go and speak to another witness. Sophie the gorilla; she knows hundreds of words in American Sign Language. It’s standard to interview all possible witnesses. Sophie is apparently afraid of the light.
Animals that disappear from cages and come back invisible. Pregnancies that don’t come to term. Mulder thinks that aliens are involved.