Terry Prone: Clinic saving animals during a hurricane has plenty to crow about
The Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife on Sanibel Island, Florida, made sure that injured animals in their care were safely moved from the path of Hurricane Milton. Which included sharing their hotel rooms with the rescued menagerie.
Originally published in the Irish Examiner.
The birds go silent before a hurricane. It’s one of the eeriest clues that something bad is about to happen. Other animals get the heebie jeebies, too. Cats and dogs get clingy.
That happened all over the Gulf Coast of Florida last week, as the signs built up that a hell of a hurricane was on its way.
When the mandatory evacuation notice came through about Hurricane Milton, families with pets faced three options. The first was to stick the pet or pets in the car and head off to higher ground, which was much easier with smaller pets.
Owners of larger animals were left to consider staying put, which option generated much coverage for the risk-takers, particularly the family who brought their donkey upstairs where he, she, or it would have a great view of the storm surge, then predicted to hit 15 feet high.
The third and last choice was the worst, where evacuating families couldn’t take their beloved animals with them and ended up tying them to gates, fences and posts with notes inviting others to take care of them. Infinitely sad, the photographs of these lost souls, although most, if not all of them, seem to have been rescued long before Milton’s 100mph winds swept through.
One of my Floridian friends, Michelle Menendez, texted me before all hell broke loose, saying she’d locked up the neat house on stilts where she lives in the middle of Sanibel Island, off the Gulf Coast, and headed for a hotel on the mainland.
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