She should not have been
surprised. Everyone cried over the
animals and their stories, executives to housewives to farmers and everyone in
between.
Corgi-Mom’s story had a happy
ending. She spent time in the ICU, in a
cage in what had been a bedroom of the house on Obed Magee Road . People walked her and checked her condition
and fussed over her and exclaimed over her sweet nature. And, in the end, she pranced up the steps of
a swanky tour bus and was put into a cage secured to a bus seat and was on her
way to the Hampton ’s
in Long Island , New York , with about 2 dozen other animals
the Animal Rescue League took to foster out.
She’ll make someone a loving, loyal pet.
The people picking animals to go on
that fancy bus kept asking ‘what’s the story about this dog’, and we kept
saying ‘every dog has a story.’ Some of
them we knew but most we didn’t.
Imagine the stories. Imagine you are a pet, and one day your
people put you in the basement or in a closet or pantry or carrier or tie you
in the back yard and say “It’s just until the hurricane passes, we’ll be back
tomorrow.” And they don’t come
back. You bark, cry, whimper, meow. And they don’t come back. You eat the food and drink the water they
left. And they don’t come back. Some of you see water coming in your house
and find a way to climb above it, or manage to swim until it goes down. Some of you get out. Some of you are the now famous ‘rooftop
dogs’, shown worldwide on the news. Some
of you don’t make it out. But you all
now have one thing in common – you were left alone in a city that may never recover,
and your owners may never find you. And
you each have a story.
A month after the storm the rescue
teams are still finding animals, miraculously still alive, in the water ruined
homes of New Orleans
and the surrounding parishes. These are
gaunt, emaciated, and almost unanimously so glad to see people they cannot stop
licking and jumping and wagging their tails.
The teams are still catching strays running the streets, in packs or
alone, fatter from eating the dog food that is being put out on almost every
corner but still frightened, confused, and looking for their people.
Mark, from
Long Island, spent days in the city trying to get as many animals as he could;
he slept in his van in the parking lot of the Winn-Dixie market that had been
turned into a temporary shelter and animal drop-off point. He found many animals, including a shy young
dog that he took home to foster. One day
he saw a Uhaul with dogs inside it. He
was about to break a window to get the dogs out, because it was so hot, when a
woman came outside and said that she and her daughter were checking on the dogs
every ½ hour at least. They were trying
to get to Arizona ,
and he was crying when he said that he gave them $40 to help them out.
One night Lorraine came out of the house in
tears. She had gotten a call from some
one who said a group of dogs was being held at a school somewhere in the city,
and that the police went in and shot them.
Everyone at the camp was horrified.
More checking revealed that it had happened, because the dogs were
beyond any hope of saving, too starved, too sick. Everyone mourned, even though everyone knew
it was for the best.
At the
Winn-Dixie, a young man came up to one of the rescue teams and asked if they
had seen a white pit bull. They have
seen hundreds of pit bulls, many of them white.
“It was in the house with my grandfather and he – he – he didn’t make
it. I want to find my dog, he’s the only
thing I have left.” The rescue team
gives him phone numbers to call and goes on to look for more animals.
One little
dog had been found in a house, where it had been for a month, with its
owners. They were dead. Another sweet tempered female dog was found
in a room with her mate and their litter.
She was the only survivor.
The ‘Fisherman’, one of two men who
had originally been hired because they had boats and could get in to the city
areas and look for animals brought dogs one night. He said some Federal Marshalls had stopped
him and said they knew where there was a dog in a house. He told the story: “Ah followed them a long
ways in (…to the city) to this house and we went in and looked but we didn’t
find no dog. I asked them was they sure
and they said ‘Yes’, they’d heard it.
Well, then, Ah told them, Ah’m not leavin’ until Ah find it. And do you know, that dog had climbed up, you
know in the kitchen where they’s cabinets up above and all, well, the kitchen
was a mess of course with the refrigerator laid over and all, but that dog had
climbed up on top of the stove and was up in a cabinet – Ah jest seen it’s paw
a’stickin’ out and Ah got ‘er”. The dog
had been in the house for 31 days. It
was emaciated, but had energy enough to wag all over when taken from its cage
at Camp Katrina .
The young Lab mix was named Lucky Lady.
A mother
and daughter live next door to each other, and have 19 cats, most of which were
in cages in the daughter’s house when the floods started. She was next door, having tea with her mother
when a nephew pounded on the door to tell them the water was rising. Together they managed to get upstairs with
her father, who has dementia and had a door locked and had to be persuaded to
open it. As soon as she could, she went
next door to see how the cats had fared.
They were swimming in their cages, but they were all right.
The police
and National Guard at check points going in to the city wave the vehicles with
‘Animal Rescue’ signs on through, and many applaud and cheer them. They tell the rescuers where they have seen or
heard animals. In one instance, a
policeman says “I know where there are two dogs – I’ll show you on once
condition – that these dogs NEVER go back to that owner!”
One day
volunteers are sent to a woman’s home in a nearby town. She has been taking in animals and has too
many to care for by herself. They bring
back about 20 cats one day and 11 dogs the next. One of these, a mini-Doberman, is shaking
with fear. A volunteer cradles it in her
arms, sits in the shade and talks to it, telling it stories and ‘”you’re gonna
be all right, honest you are” for an hour, until it stops.
A kitten is
brought in one night. A stray about 6
months old, it was found on Desire
Street . How
did something that small survive? It is
skin and bone, but meowing loudly, and when taken from the carrier, it wraps
paws around the volunteer’s neck and licks her chin. It feels safe again. It has ringworm and diarrhea, as do many of
the animals. Curable, and it has already
snuggled its way into a volunteer’s heart and will go home with her, and be
named Streetcar.
Volunteers driving through a
neighborhood looking for dogs see a couple trying to salvage furniture from
their house. They left their ‘Doberman
diva’ and her 7 month old puppy with food and water when they left town on
Sunday, thinking they would be back in a day or two. After 16 days of trying to get permission to
go back and get the dogs, the husband found someone with a boat, someone who
could get around the National Guard checkpoints and went in. The puppy was barely alive and it took it 12
days to be able to stand up again-it has been in a vet clinic intensive care
unit for 3 weeks. “As soon as we can
we’ll have our pets back” they smile and say.
Their cat was in the house for 26 days, “She wouldn’t let us come near
her”, but is doing well now.
A man and his son stop their car,
all they have left, at the gate to the camp.
“We got out, with our five Chihuahuas ,
but now we’re staying with someone and we need food for them, do you have
any? And do you maybe have a carrier or
something? The one is pregnant and she
needs some place to have her puppies.”
The little boy describes their two cats, that they could not catch to
bring with them, and the volunteer promises to look for them. “We went back in, but we lost everything, and
we didn’t see the cats,” the father says.
They leave with a carrier, and bags and cans of food and are told to
come back when they need more.
The
rescuers tell of finding a dog that has been in a cage on a roof for 34 days –
and is alive. How? No one knows.
Some, in yards and on the streets, are not alive. Rescuers sigh and sometimes cry, but go past
these looking for ones they can save.
Besides the
dogs, they find cats, rabbits, hamsters and gerbils and birds and fish and chickens
and one day bring back a goose. That is
promptly named AFLAC and put into a pen with a wading pool full of water. The smaller animals are in cages in the house
and the chickens in a wire pen out back – the rooster tells everyone when to
start a new day at Camp
Katrina .
A month after the storms many of
the dogs found are Pit Bulls and Rottwiellers, large dogs able to survive. Both are usually friendly with people; many
of the males show scars of fights and the females have other evidence of either
fights or of being over bred – one-dog ‘puppy mills’. Security patrols are necessary at night to
keep locals from stealing these to use as fighting or bait dogs. There are also
cute smaller dogs, like two Lahso Apso’s that came in. Unfortunately, one alleged volunteer took
them when she left – without bothering to get permission from shelter
officials. Fortunately, the majority of
the volunteers were there to actually help, and not for their own personal
gain. The shelter is still deciding
whether to pursue recovering those dogs and charge the person. They have enough to do without that
unnecessary problem.
The rescue
teams go out again – the National Guard has told them where a group of dogs is
huddled on a high piece of ground in the still flooded 9th
Ward. They will try to get to those dogs
today, “They can’t have much time left”.
At the
camp, others feed and walk and pet the rescued animals. And load them into vans and a camper and a
trailer and suv’s and a bus to be taken all over the country, to no-kill
shelters that will find foster homes.
Their pictures will be on www.petfinder.com. They hope that at least some will find their
owners. Some of the cats and dogs are
being held until the owners themselves find a home and can come for a happy
reunion. Everyone – animals, owners and
volunteers alike - wants more of those.
And there will be. Everyone is
sure of it.
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