There’s this gut-wrenching, heart-rending story from some Katrina survivors on CNN.com, (link) in which we’re told the tale of a family trapped in their attick for three days. During that time the grandmother died, the mother considered suicide (inviting the daughters to participate), and one of the girls managed to talk Mom out of it.
Two things stand out.
1) The suicide method would have been “Death by Lortab.” I’ve had Lortab. I know, that’s not really a personal connection with these people, but it’s a start.
2) They decided not to evacuate initially because of their pets (three dogs, a cat, a guinea pig, a gerbil, six hamsters and a parakeet.). Then, when the levees broke and the water began rising, they lost some precious time trying to save the pets, and ended up saving two of the dogs. Both dogs have now been abandoned.
Their ordeal really is harrowing to read. And, in the spirit of “let’s all try to learn something useful here,” It also serves as a cautionary tale. The moral of the story? Prioritize the human lives in your house far enough above the animal lives that when push comes to shove, you don’t have to think twice before letting your pets die — even if the coming calamity is only a possibility.
I’ve cried when my pets died. I’ve felt a deep connection to the animals my family lived with. But I’d MUCH rather console my children over the abandonment of our animals than over the fact that they had to watch and listen as their grandmother died of congestive heart failure while lying in filthy water in a 110-degree attic. No, I don’t believe this family knew at the time that they were making that choice, and HAD they known, I’m sure they would have chosen differently.
If my home ever catches fire, the only thought I’ll waste on our cute, little teddy-bear hamster named Hazel is that NOBODY pauses to pull her out of the house until the fire is OUT. And nobody goes back in to fight the fire except firemen.
If we ever have to evacuate the city I’m in, whether or not there’s a certainty of calamity, we’ll pile in and leave. I’ll throw a couple of extra food pellets in the little furball’s cage, set it out on the counter where looters and do-gooders can find it, and be done with it.
Prioritizing in this way is something you have to do in advance.
–Howard
Thank you.
What stunned me among the Katrina devastation was the bloggers who cried over how people weren’t allowed to bring animals with them during parts of the evacuation. I wanted very much to say “the people are more important than the animals!” but didn’t… too scared to raise my voice, I guess. >_>;
So I’m glad to see *someone* has sense to note the priorities.
This has been a topic of discussion in our home. While I would be very upset to lose Orion, the lives of the humans in this house have to come first. While I feel terrible for those who lost their pets, I can’t understand putting yourself and your children in danger for the sake of a dog, cat, guinea pig, etc.
Yourself, yes. Family, I hope not.
On the other hand, consider: Might it not have been the children insisting they not leave their beloved pets?
I read the article. The girls said that their mother made the decision. Besides, a parent needs to be firm when it comes to their child’s safety. Any parent who doesn’t is a poor one.
I agree. Like I said, take your own life into your own hands, don’t let your kids.
I hadn’t read the article. I do know that such a scenario is a possibility, though. Kids don’t necessarily realize the actual dangers involved when they threaten “I’m not going anywhere without [insert name of beloved pet],” then go run off and hide. Been there, done that, and I was good at hiding. Thankfully, nothing ‘tragic’ has ever happened because of my rash acts as a child. I’ll wager more than one family may have stayed behind due to a similar scenario.
That’s enough of my two cents for tonight. I’ll slink off to bother kitty now.
Even if the children were insisting, a parent’s role is not to give in to their children, but to be the adult – to protect and guide their child. Putting a child in harm’s way because the child doesn’t want to leave Fluffy isn’t acceptable, or at least it isn’t the way I was taught or believe.
I agree with what you’re saying. Any respectable adult SHOULD NOT allow a child to remain in danger over an animal.
I also know talking about this here, in the safety and comfort of our own computers is a LOT easier than dealing with an upset child. I know this not because I have children, but because I remember quite a bit of the hell I put my parents through when I WAS a child, and I was convinced I was right (not possessing yet the concept of shades of grey). After all, it’s wrong to abandon kitty to be all burnt up, right? Of course, you don’t think about how many lives you’re risking when you go and hide or run away when the building’s on fire / in the path of a hurricane / about to be hit by a flood / avalanche / what have you. But for the grace of God would I have been a crispy critter along with probably kitty, mom and dad and what have you.
But hey, right now, I’m sitting comfy in front of a computer screen throwing out what ifs that we hope will never happen. And thank God for that, right?
You know … I continue to be amazed and baffled at people who, trapped by rising floodwaters and with no indication of when the water will stop rising, flee into the attic from which there is no way out, instead of waiting until the water’s well up the upper floor windows and then going out an open window and safely onto the roof, where they can be seen and rescued. I can’t help but think of the analogy of horses running back into a burning barn.
Sure, the winds were still high when the flooding began — but if the water’s risen high enough that there’s no shelter to be had by lying flat on the downwind side of the roof hanging onto whatever’s available (bathroom vents, TV antenna, chimney, whatever), then anyone who climbed into the attic has already drowned anyway. And from the roof, you may be able to climb to a higher adjacent building.
For what’s it’s worth, I have a friend who did exactly that: when the floodwaters got high enough, instead of going into the attic where they would surely have died, he and his aged mother climbed out a window and clung to the outside of the house for two days. They are all right.
He volunteered the reason they didn’t leave: They thought they and their house could weather the hurricane (which, in fact, they did), but they never thought the levees would break.
They are both all right now, but they’ve lost everything. It’s heartbreaking.
On a cats and quilts emailing list my mom’s on, one lady was attacked because she evacuated without her cats. While most of the people were supportive, a group of mostly lurkers went psycho on her and drove her off the list. Then the worse offender left because the moderator came down on her and she didn’t like “being censored”.
I’m going to forward this story to my mother to share with her group. Most of the people who did the attacks didn’t have children, but that’s no reason for them to push their priorities on others.
Oh, and the woman that was attacked – when she reutrned home all her kitties were there and in perfect health. Sometimes you need to have faith that God will take care of the sparrow and the cat.
You and I are on the same page here, Howard. In the event of an area-wide catastrophe forcing me to evacuate, I top off Cassie’s food and water (with those bulk-feeders, she’s good for two weeks minimum) and I start making tracks. She’s an indoor cat anyway; if I’m having to live off the land (as I’ve made plans toward and laid in a kit for), she’s not going to have a lot of survival chances alongside me anyway. Most likely, a raccoon or a feral dog would get her. At least in a third-floor apartment with plenty of food and water, she’s got the same chances of riding out the disaster as the building (reasonably good under most circumstances, I feel) and if she doesn’t make it, it’ll be quick. The two most likely scenarios around here are wildfire and flood, which means that either the building will make it (likely) or it’ll come down fast – and a collapsing building is much more merciful than starving, lost, in a strange environment. And if the building makes it, I’ll more than likely be back before the food or water starts running low.
Have you got an emergency preparedness kit stocked up? And is it where you can get it into action in minimal time?
Re: Emergency Preparedness Kits — Our family has six backpacks loaded with changes of clothing (including cold-weather gear) water, survival rations, extra shoes, and some other incidental tools and things.
We last prepped these just following our family camping trip in the Summer of 2004, and will be refreshing them again later this fall.
–Howard
YES! I was waiting for someone to come up with a sane opinion on the pets issue. My faith in segments of humanity has been reassured.
I’ve thought about reasoning in some of my friends journals who have posted in outrage, but *shrugs* it’s not going to do anything. If anything, I’ll look like the nasty calculating and practical blaggard who would save the world, but it’d be a worse world after it got saved and the quality of the saved world is more important than that it’s saved.
*coughs* Or something like that.
Bill Whittle talks about “tribes” in this blog entry. It’s a long read, and is very biting, but he makes a few very useful simplifications.
There’s the Pink tribe, and the Grey tribe. “Pink” concerns itself with how things feel, with self-esteem, and positive mental attitude. “Grey” concerns itself with how things work, with cold calculations, and planning for failure.
People who will save their pets are thinking Pink. People who will abandon their pets are thinking Grey. When your youngest son has a blister and is crying, it’s GOOD to be Pink, to empathize, to show kindness, and to help. When your youngest son needs to be dragged out of a burning building, cries for his favorite blanky be damned, you need to be Grey.
The Greys are the ones who will save the world. The Pinks are the ones who make it worth saving. The question that dogs us all is “when to be what.”
That was a darn good read. I quite liked it. The whole sheep, sheepdogs and wolves thing was also quite good.
It’s funny, although I’ve never been a part of anything military, anything police or anything of the sheepdog nature. But … I’ve always felt a common bond with those kinds of people. And that’s because I have that same nature in me.
I’m very Grey. But the circles that I’m normally in are quite saturated with Pinks. And not just any Pinks, but Pinks that rather dislike the Greys of the world and unconsciously devalue them in their stances and talk. That runs me down a fair bit and I’m sure they wouldn’t want that. *grins* It wouldn’t be Pink. Things like that article are reassuring though.
Thanks for pointing it out.
Thank you for that link. I’d like to think I’d be a sheepdog, circumstances permitting. A very stupid, short lived one certainly, but one who I hope would make a difference.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I think they’re better off saving the animals and leaving the morons behind, to judge by some of the Katrina stories I’ve been hearing about. Rescuing pets is one thing, but insisting that you don’t leave without Foofie – and having had enough money to flee WITH Foofie when you had a chance – and then blaming the rescue team for leaving you behind, only to watch Foofie die anyways along with Gramma and one of your kids… well, I’d have saved Foofie in that case and left the human behind.
I guess I’m going to be the voice of dissent.
If there’s a way to take a pet without endangering human lives, I feel that you should take it. When you bring home an animal as a pet, you take the stewardship and responsibility of taking care of it, and so that’s what you should do. Obviously you shouldn’t risk your own life for the pet, or the life of your children, but to use your own example-if you’ve got time to set it out on the counter and give it extra food, you’ve got the time to take the hamster without endangering yourself or your family.
That said, this is a horrible situation, but I can also see where they were coming from. Not only would they have been leaving behind beloved pets, but if they had gone, they would have risked being charged with animal abuse, which is a felony in many places. The Louisiana SPCA made a statement before the hurricane even hit that they would be making every effort to charge those who abandoned their animals. So while I don’t know the family’s whole situation, given the factors involved, I could see how they could have made that cost-benefit analysis and decided it was best to stay put. Hindsight is 20/20 after all.
I’m going to reiterate because it feels like one of those when I feel like I’m not being very coherent-don’t risk your life for your pets, but if you can do so without risking yourself or your family, you have the responsibility to do so.
I hadn’t heard that about the SPCA. If this is true, then that’s a group of people who need to be lined up in front of the wall and shot — or at least have the gun pointed at them and told that if they were animals, we WOULD have shot them. You have a MANDATORY EVACUATION, and the SPCA is threating legal action against evacuees? It’s entirely possible that communique killed dozens of people.
If it’s true.
Re: the rest of what you said — I agree. A pet is a stewardship. Included in that stewardship is the responsibility to decide whether or not to put the pet down if it becomes rabid, incurably/terminally ill, etc. Most people don’t understand this.
If I have time to evacuate, but I’m doing so on foot (e.g. freeways are packed or blocked), I’m not going to carry the hamster. If there’s no room in the vehicle, I’m not going to carry the hamster. If I DO decide to carry the hamster and it becomes inconvenient, we’ll have a little freedom ceremony and turn it loose, or, worst-case, drop it along the way. Evacuations can be like that.
To be sure, these people did not understand the choice they were making, and obviously made SEVERAL wrong choices that led them into the attic. The only judgement I pass on them is the “hindsight” call. But for all of us, we should learn from them, and prioritize in advance. It’s always easier to act quickly when the decision was made long before the crisis hit.
Many of these people were stuck there because they couldn’t figure out how to afford enough bus fare, time off from work, etc. to actually evacuate!
Personally, I’m TOTALLY pissed at the mayor. Those unused buses sitting there drowned are TOTALLY inexcusable. I’m pissed at the governor for not kicking more on the levees and getting the money from SOMEWHERE to get them up to snuff. (His response after the fact seemed more horrified than lazy.) I’m TOTALLY FUCKING PISSED at Brown for accepting a job he’s unqualified for and for Bush for giving that job to a guy who helped his campaign.
The federal response to the disaster, I think, was also problematical because it was the first time the new homeland security/etc department had to deal with a situation with transport into and out of a city destroyed. I think it would have done much much much better with a qualified leader in FEMA, but nothing like this level of flooding in a major metropolis has been seen by our country, and so I think even a very qualified FEMA director and homeland security director would have had many problems with the evacuation.
That being said, I’m pissed at Bush for stocking every job he can with ‘friends’ and ‘campaign buddies’ instead of qualified applicants. Not that every president doesn’t do that. But usually it doesn’t wind up costing lives. I’d like to think that some hard lessons are being learned by ALL politicians about how much back scratching ought to be allowed.
It’s hard to consider it untrue, since that information is from a press release on their own website: ttp://www.la-spca.org/archive/082705katrina.htm
From the press release: Pets cannot survive if left to fend for themselves or tied to a stationary object. Those people who choose to abandon their pets will be charged with cruelty to animals.
Looking at this webpage, it looks like animal abuse is “only” a misdemeanor in LA as opposed to a felony, but I have no doubt that this played a part in some people’s decisions.
And with the clarification you made in this comment, I concede that you have the right attitude. I took from your OP that you’d just naturally leave the hamster in an evacuation situation. If you’re walking or there’s not room, that’s interfering with saving your family, thus would fall under a reason to leave it in my view. Fortunately(?), I don’t think we Utahns are ever going to be in a situation that an evacuation can be planned. Earthquakes are still virtually unpredictable at this point beyond the fact that we know they’ll happen sooner or later.
Sounds like whoever did the press release forgot to reread their own instructions for hurricane conditions.
Clearly, it is best to bring your pet with you when you leave town.
That sentence, as worded, does carry the presupposition that it’s not always possible to do so. Especially after listing reasons why it’s not usually possible to leave your pet with them or a shelter during storms.
I’m sure the person issuing the press release was speaking in the heat of the moment, but I seriously doubt the court system would let them follow through on their threat. There are laws that allow people to save themselves first that take precedence. That said, I’m sure those same laws would probably allow surviving family members to sue the SPCA for their press release.
I would only abandon my dogs if it were the absolute last possible way to get myself or the humans I live with to safety. I would be hauling them on my roof, riding with them on the bus, walking with them to high ground, and carrying them in my arms.
I honestly don’t belive that human lives are intrinsically more valuable than animal lives. And saying that, I still eat meat. I wish we treated our stock animals better. I wish we treated people better. But really, a human life is only really important to it’s relatives and friends. And a pet’s life is only important to IT’S family and friends. I don’t think less of people who tried to save their pets and found the situation escalated far more rapidly than they expected.
On the other hand, I would abandon our guinnea pigs before I’d abandon my doggies. So prioritization IS important to me. I’d save Alison before I saved Nicky or Ash, but I’d try and save them too if I could.
No, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but our connections to others is what makes us work. Were social creatures. And many of us anthropormorphise our pets enough to consider them part of our clan. And so I won’t look down on them for trying to save them. Because honestly… I would probably be stuck on a roof with my dogs and my fiance demanding a ride for all of us right now. I’m kinda stupid that way.
I understand the mindset, but I disagree with it. I believe that human lives are intrinsically far more valuable than animal lives. If I thought it would save a human life, I’d kill every pet in my house.
Hell, if I thought it would save a human life, I’d kill every pet in YOUR house. Sure, there are laws against me coming in and doing that, and yes, this is a very unlikely hypothetical situation (and it’s horrific in the extreme for me to suggest that I’d do that — as long as we’re pretending, let’s pretend I’d at least ASK first, and explain to you how this inconceivably odd situation arose), but now you know where I stand. Human Life > Animal Life.
(Note: I would NOT go to the trouble of killing your pets to save the life of Osama Bin Laden. But that’s because I believe that it is possible for humans to commit crimes for which their lives should be forfeit. And that is another discussion entirely.)
Nicky and Ash are giving you A Look.
You are officially never invited over to my house for target practice.
For a barbecue, sure. I’m just gonna check on the ‘dogs’ before you put them on the barbeque. 🙂
Like I said, I would save a human life over a pet’s life, but I wouldn’t be happy about it. And I’d probably run a ‘reasonable’ amount of risk trying to save them puppies. But like other posters said, when you get a pet, you’re making a commitment to taking care of that life, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Also, I would pull the trigger on Osama. And many other people. The bonus of me valuing animal life as much as human life is that I see a purpose behind killing people who are wrong in the head. I’d put down a vicious dog, and I’d put down a murderer. I’ve hunted animals for food and seen what happens when the shot isn’t clean. I felt bad for those animals. I generally feel better for wild game than for domesticated animals, though. Poor bastards usually have a crappy life.
I’m weird. Socially liberal, fairly conservative economically, for small government, but not where ‘small government’ people usually want the cuts, and pro choice, pro death penalty, and so forth. WEIRD.
I wonder if I bombard Howard with random cute puppy pictures, he’ll ease his stance.
LOL.
Nope. Because no matter how cute the puppies are, my sons and daughters are cuter. I look at dogs, and a very cold, calculating part of me asks “how much useful protein could I get out of that wee beastie.”
😉
Menchi here has a few words to say about that… ;P
But I tend to agree with you. Not that I’d use such crass terms… and if the chips came down, I’m not sure if I’d be able to do what’s necessary. I had my cat put down when he was 15 and too pained from disease to move more than a few feet, but it was devastating for me and everyone else in the family, and I think if there was anything we could have done to help him feel better, we would have gone for it and to hell with the cost.
Menchi translates to “Mince” in the manga. Heh heh. 🙂
Which is a fairly accurate translation, actually: “Menchi” is the word the Japanese use to describe minced beef or pork. So we all know where Excel’s head was when she named her new
emergency rationpet.So, does “puchuu” mean “soooo cuuuuuute”? 🙂
If I ever go to your house for a barbecue (or if you ever come here) I’m sure we can do better than dog. Or hot-dogs. Whichever. I assure you, I’ll do my damndest to make sure we don’t need to kill what we’re eating, and that what we’re eating is recognizable as something other than “maybe meat.”
I grilled some chicken today, chopped it and folded it in tortillas with rice and cheese, and smothered it in mole sauce. It’s days like today I wish I could have company over more often.
–Howard
What scares me is the person who would value the vicious animal above other humans.
Semi-related story: My sister and her husband rescued a vicious dog from a shelter. He was even vicious as a puppy and was called Hades by the volunteers. They never really got Hades unter control, even with training. When he finally died, they found out he had several tumors in his brain and was probably in pain the whole time. I have to wonder how humane it really was to let him live five years in constant pain. I know it made my sister rethink some of her ideas on animals.
That said, I think vicious humans should probably be put down too. There isn’t much that successfully cures their viciousness in most cases and this is coming from someone who is getting a social science degree and is suppose to believe everyone can be saved. But the studies show that after a certain degree of exhibited cruelty, nothing works.
Now, it is possible to “cure” a developmentally impaired sex offender. However, it’s through negative behavioral conditioning and most people would consider the method (giving electrical shocks when they become sexually stimualated) inhumane, which is why it is no longer used despite the fact it has been the only proven successful method for making these people safe to be in society again.
But the studies show that after a certain degree of exhibited cruelty, nothing works.
However, most practical field surveys show that injections of high-velocity lead have a remarkably low failure rate. Just ask the beat cops from the middle of last century.
…it has been the only proven successful method for making these people safe to be in society again.
Electroshock therapy does not make such people safe for society. It prevents them from following their previous outlet for their socially unacceptable drives… which leaves them building up their frustrations until either they find another outlet (probably an even more violent one) or until they break the conditioning… and when they do break the conditioning, the backlash will be even more expressed than before. EST has never had a good long-term track record, unless you add in all the cases of persistant vegitative states and accidental cardiac arrest – granted, neither of those categories provide very many recidivists.
You’ve got your therapies confused.
Despite both using eletricity, they are not the same. But I do agree that most behaviorial conditionings do need follow up treatments every few years. But it is still the most successful tactic to date for mentally impaired sex offenders.
Electroshock therapy is not adverse behaviorial conditioning. It actually “resets” some of the brain’s activities, by running an electrical charge through certain areas of the brain. The person is unconscious when it happens and it’s used to treat very severe depression and such.
Adverse behavioral conditioning is monitoring the person’s body reactions as they watch possibly stimulating pictures and applying a quick eletrical jolt when the person starts to get an reaction.
There is no comparison between the two therapies. The amount of eletricity used is vastly different, as is the duration and locations it is applied.
You’ve got your therapies confused.
Quite likely. I am not a psychiatrist, psychologist, or anything related to them. I am a manufacturing technician with a degree in Electronic Engineering and a work-based specialization in optical metrology equipment – not exactly prime ground for understanding the wiring of people.
What I actually *know* about the interactions of the human body/neurosystem and electricity is that, at the levels I work with them, interactions are bad. Frequently, fatal-type bad. (Sixty kilowatts is not a level with which the human physiology deals well. You tend to cook rather faster than a hot dog in a microwave.)
In the field of behavioral modification, I’ll yield the floor – it sounds like you probably have more information than I do. Most of mine comes from a sense of morbid curiosity and literature such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I still don’t think any such behavior modification is a permanent answer, and that backlash is something to seriously worry about, but I’m willing to let those more knowledgeable than myself deal with the problem. I’ll stick to problems I know how to fix – and that I know will allow me to fix them.
I’m studying to be a therapist.
EST has changed drastically since the days of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s much more precise and effective. It’s also not used as frequently. Only cases that meet a certain criteria are referred.
The backlash you seem to be talking about is not something I’ve seen in the literature. I have an idea of what I think you’re talking about, but if the behavioral modification is being done properly in a clinical setting, it’s not going to happen because the adverse behavioral modification is only part of the treatment.
You must understand that the original behavior itself is usually a backlash (bad term – very inaccurate – “compensating reaction” is better) in itself and acceptable compensating behaviors are also trained into the patients. They aren’t repressing, they are redirecting.
Socially liberal, fairly conservative economically, for small government, but not where ‘small government’ people usually want the cuts, and pro choice, pro death penalty, and so forth. WEIRD.
Sounds a lot like my personal politics, actually. I usually phrase it “conservative libertarian” or sometimes “Zen Objectivist” – the latter when I’m looking to completely confuse someone I feel needs to be stunned into silence.
So they had the choice of leaving before the storm, packing everyone into the car and heading for high land but decided to stay, because shelters won’t take in pets. Ok, you go to a shelter, keep the pets in the car and rotate out to take care of them. Yeah, it sucks for 7 animals to be stuck in a car but it beats drowning. Why is figuring out such things so difficult.
I believe that most shelters won’t let you come in and out like that – at least not during the immediate crisis.
I very much agree with you about proiritizing. And about stewardship, as far as that goes. You take an animal into your home, you are making yourself responsible for it, and you have a duty to see to that animal’s welfare. But humans come first. That’s always been my take.
Because I’m involved in the furry community, I’ve seen a lot of things about the animals that were left homeless by this. Furries identify with them (surprise, surprise) and I don’t think it’s a bad thing. A lot of people don’t know what to do, or how to help with this crisis beyond donating money, and adopting a homeless pet is something constructive. I myself really wish that my sister weren’t violently allergic to cats, so that I could take in one of the homeless cats that they’re trying to place.
But people still have to come first. It really upsets me when people act as though animals were MORE important than human beings. However much we may regard fluffy as a person and a member of the family, fluffy is not as important as a human, and I wish I could get some people I know to see that.
Because I’m involved in the furry community, I’ve seen a lot of things about the animals that were left homeless by this.
I can’t really say that I see how the first and second half of this sentence relate. Help?
I thought it was pretty clear. Let’s see if I got it right:
“Furries are spending a lot of time talking about the homeless animals. As part of the furry community, the writer was more exposed to that, and therefore more aware of the stories, issues, etc.”
Exactly the case. And Mavik states the general attitude of the furry community at large pretty well.
Those of us that identify ourselves with the furry community tend to anthropomorphise animals alot. Most furries also tend to be fairly rabidly pro-animal. So when a disaster like Katrina hits alot of the furry boards and blogs talk about pet rescue and similar things since they assume that everyone else will worry about the humans and so someone needs to worry about the animals.
–Mav
I feel sorry for these people having had such a horrible experience, but… Damn, they were foolish. I’m much sorrier for the people who wanted to evacuate, but couldn’t.
Indeed. These folks had a choice, and chose unwisely. There are many, many similar stories from people who did NOT have the means to leave.
–Howard
Maybe I’m not understanding… is there a reason they couldn’t pile the pets in the car and drive like the wind? Was it just a lack of car-ness, or what? Do I just not understand how an evac order works?
Note: I haven’t seen the article in question.
The article didn’t say. Consider, though — four adults, 3 dogs: that’s already too much for a mid-sized car. Not that we know what kind of car they had, either.
While that’s true, I come from a dog family, and we’d have made room.
Heck, I’d happily put my feet up on my COMPUTER.
Here’s a quote:
“My mom told us we weren’t leaving because wherever we went, we couldn’t bring our animals with us,” said Tiffany, who wants to be a veterinarian and mourned leaving behind the pets, including those buried in the back yard.
On Monday morning, after the levees broke, the water came into the house, and instantly swamped the carpeted floors. Within minutes, it was waist deep.
“It started coming in my bedroom, and before I know it, the mattress is all full of water,” Debbie said. “It was that quick.”
Amanda woke Tiffany up in her room, the last room to stay dry. The girls quickly started grabbing pets and waited for their mom, who was snatching credit cards from her room.
“When it started getting like that, I said we have to go in the attic, because that’s the highest place I know of to go,” Debbie said.
Tiffany lost her cell phone trying to save a hamster and nearly drowned trying to save her cat in water that quickly swelled over her head. “It started coming up, faster and faster,” she said.”
You know, some hotels DO accept pets.. and notice the kid nearly drowned trying to save yet another pet. Nice sentiment, but bad choice in the situation – it’s like stopping to grab a hat that fell off your head while trying to flee from the lava flow that’s about 50 feet behind you – those couple of seconds you’ve stopped the car may be the couple of seconds difference between safety and the death of everyone in the vehicle.
Yeah.. sounds like just plain stupid to me. I mean, by the time the flood water’s coming in, Charlie has already struck up the band. And even if the pets have to sleep in the car, it’s not THAT bad a deal…