Smokin' California
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Mother Nature’s forces are at work all over the world, and not necessarily in a good way.  Typhoons, floods, fires, earthquakes, volcanoes … the list goes on and on.  The world news seems to be an endless list of disasters of one sort or another.  While our friends in the Midwest portion of the United States are battling record floods, here in California we are entering one of the worst fire seasons on record.  I know, I know,  it seems like we say that every year, but this year I’m not kidding!

Check out this link if you think I’m joking:

 http://yubanet.com/fire.php 

Hah!  Now you believe me, don’t you?!  Have you ever seen so many fires?

In my area, the current crop of fires was caused by a series of dry lightning strikes we had last Saturday evening. 

Air quality here in my neck of the woods is, um, well … chunky.  Yeah, chunky is a good word for it. It's a technical term.  You can see the air, you can taste the air, and you can practically feel it coating your lungs.  And the smell – well the smell is just awful.

I find it really difficult to sleep at night when i keep smelling smoke.  My brain is always on alert this time of year.  And when it's sending signals of "FIRE!" constantly through the night, I don't get much rest.  I have a friend here in California who has had so many fires come near her house, and who has been stuck on the freeway in the middle of a fire, that she is absolutely terrifired during fire season.  Poor her.  I heard our governor say just today that fire season is just about year-round now in California.  I hate to think of her being terrified year-round, for gosh sakes!  She just about refuses to leave her home this time of year. She wants to be home to be there to evacuate her animals if necessary.  The last thing she wants to have happen is for her to be away from home and her animals be trapped in harm's way. 

This is how things are lookings here these days - not a pretty sight.

Where's the fire?

Normally we can see Big Hill perfectly – now it’s just that faint gray tree line off in the distance.  You can bet Butterfly and I won’t be hiking up there, or anywhere, today!

Thankfully, none of the fires are close to where I live, but I still have things “sort of” prepared just in case something happens.  This means I have food and water for the animals read to go out the door.  All the dogs have their collars, tags and microchips.  The horses know how to load in a trailer.  The neighbor knows where my animals are and I know where hers are.  I’ve done my best to maintain a 100’ defensible space around all of our buildings.  Of course there are more things I can to do to be better prepared, but isn’t that always the case?

Even the local wildlife is suffering with the smoky air.  Don’t you wonder what they think of all this? I found these guys on our driveway this morning.  Pardon the poor quality of the photos. I was shooting through the windshield of my car.

Turkey Trot

Run away, run away!

Is this what I see in the deli-case at the grocery store under “smoked turkey”?

Recently I attended a conference put on by the Humane Society of the United States, called “Animals in Disasters” and it once again reminded me why I need to be prepared.  As if I didn’t already know from the number of times I have gone to disasters doing animal rescue.

Doing what I do best

This is me, being pounced upon by some extremely happy dogs.  They had not seen their humans in several days, so they were deliriously happy to see our crew, not to mention the food and water we brought along!  This was during the San Diego wildfires in Southern California last October.  I had been deployed by HSUS, as a volunteer with their National Disaster Animal Response Team (NDART).  We were going into the evacuated areas to check on animals left behind, providing food, water and medical care as needed.

I was reminded about just how bad I look while working in a disaster.  I was greeted by conference attendees with a volley of, “Tammy!  Is that you?  I never would have recognized you!  You clean up real well!”

I guess I can safely say that during a disaster, I am a disaster!