November 8, 2005

        Hello Everyone—

        Here’s an update on the efforts we’ve been making to help the horses and people affected by Hurricane Katrina.

        This trip Pete and I met Laurie Kelly in Defuniak Springs to pick up a BIG load of feed and hay. (I keep trying to think of a way to go into business with Laurie—she’s got “national treasure” written all over her.) It turned out this big, heavy, scary load was very timely.

        The rumblings we heard during our last trip to Lakeshore about feed and hay piracy are resounding even more loudly. With the start of Fall weather, the grass is dying back in regions where grass had survived the storm, and the increased competition for feed and hay is making shortages felt more keenly everywhere. This is creating a new hardship for the people along coastal areas who lost their grass back in August, when the 24-foot storm-surge inundated the area. Now it seems that fewer and fewer of the supply loads coming in from northerly regions, such as Kentucky and Tennessee, are making their way to coastal areas. Instead, as inland horse-owners find themselves facing hay shortages this winter, whole loads are being “waylaid” before they reach the more southerly areas. I suppose it’s only natural that people want to stockpile hay under these circumstances.

        However, this increased competition is affecting the people and horses in Lakeshore, and, doubtless, in other communities along the coast hardest hit by the storm. In addition, the county-run distribution facilities have had to tighten their guidelines concerning how much feed and hay any one person may pick up at a time. This means that for folks in Lakeshore, a trip to the county distribution facility—about 100 miles round trip—only provides them with two bags of feed and a couple bales of hay.

        An additional frustration for these folks is the persistent perception in other areas that there aren’t any animals left in Lakeshore. As we were unloading feed, Teressa told us that Kenny Ray had “gotten into it” with one of the county administrators when Kenny tried to get clearance to pick up a more sizeable load from the Kiln center. “He was so mad,” Teressa said. “They tried to tell him that there weren’t any horses down here.”

        This problem seems to arise from several factors. One is that many of the horses in this area are of the “back-yard” variety. There aren’t the big, visible stables you find further north. This back-yard distribution makes it much harder to see horses if you’re just driving through the area. And there’s also a tendency toward a certain attitude: These little back-yard horses aren’t as important as fancy show horses or high-priced race horses. Of course the miserable paradox is that it’s these “back-yard” horses who really need the help. The owners of fancy horses tend to have a lot more options and resources.

        There is also an element of mistrust that has to be overcome. There’s no doubt in my mind that people in Lakeshore are beginning to trust our help and intentions. (I began to believe this when I noticed that Teressa’s dogs are now happy to see us arrive. I take this as evidence that our visits create a good feeling in the people these dogs are taking care of, and so we have earned the dogs’ approval.) But there was a real fear after the storm that someone would come in and take the horses out for “safe-keeping.” When I mentioned this to Teressa and “Miss Bonnie,” one of the regular boarders at the Ladner barn, they both agreed. “We’d already lost nearly everything,” Teressa told me. “We didn’t want to lose our animals. They’re what we care about most in the world.”

        Bonnie then told me about a horse she has that was severely injured in the storm. She nursed the horse for two weeks without any help, only to be approached one day by several “agents of some kind” telling her they were going to take the horse because it was in such poor condition. “I told them they should have seen it two weeks ago! Why don’t they come to help?” she asked. “Don’t come in here telling us you’re going to take our horses.” This was the first time Bonnie had ever spoken to me. I’d seen her at the barn, and I knew two of the horses presently in the barn were hers. But she had never spoken directly to me before. I could tell from her tone there was a lot of anger and mistrust attached to her experiences, but she seemed to quiet herself, and after a moment she said, “I really want to thank you people for what you’re doing.”

        Teressa then told me that it was Bonnie who walked the fields and woods after the storm until she found all the horses. Only two from the Ladner barn had survived. Thirteen died in the flood. Bonnie climbed over the massive tangles of debris and broken trees until she found them—all but two that are still missing. I look at the dark circles under Bonnie’s eyes and wonder if she still dreams of climbing through heaped rubble, looking for the horses. I asked Teressa if the horses that drowned were outside when the storm-surge came. “No,” she told me, “they were all in the barn. But Bonnie’s stud was the only one that stayed in the barn. All the others floated out over the stall doors—I don’t know how. I guess when the water got so high, they just went over the top of the doors. They got washed out and tangled in debris. That’s how they drowned. Miss Bonnie’s stud horse was the only one still in his stall when the water went out—he was alive. The only other one that survived, Miss Bonnie found him over at the school.”

        Teressa said she got a call this week to identify a horse that had just been found dead in some debris that was being cleared. “We had two that were still missing,” she said, “—Miss Bonnie’s Palomino and another lady’s buckskin. I hated having to go, but I wanted to see if it was one of ours. I could tell it wasn’t Bonnie’s mare, but at first I wasn’t sure it wasn’t the buckskin. But then we realized it was a roan, so we knew it wasn’t either of ours. Still, somebody lost their horse and might never know whether he’s dead or alive.”

        Bonnie’s mare is still missing. “I know she’s alive,” Bonnie told us. “Someone told me they saw her after the storm.” I think about my mare and how I would feel in Bonnie’s place. I half expected her to say, “I know she’s alive. I would know it in my heart if she were dead.” But of course, then you would begin to doubt yourself, knowing how badly you wanted it to be true.

        I had noticed during previous visits the intense sadness in Bonnie’s face. I now began to have an inkling of the wretchedness haunting her every hour. And I think of the 4,000 people still missing after Katrina, more than 1,500 of them children separated from their families during the evacuation of New Orleans. For those whose beloved family members perished in the storm, grief has a hard reality. For those, like Bonnie, who don’t know the fate of their loved ones, the passing days are marked with spikes of hope and plummets of despair. And I wonder if people living in such limbo can possibly “move on.”

        On a happier note, there was another new face in the barn this week. Kenny Ray’s donkey turned up. Apparently he had been staying with some people down the road when the storm hit. He had been among those “presumed dead.” But he turned up this week—hungry, but in fair shape. He’s a pretty, bright brown donkey—almost red. It was already too dark to shoot pictures by the time I saw him, but I’ll try to get his mug on next time. He seems like quite a character. I often find myself wishing that these animals could tell their stories—I imagine we would hear some hair-raising tales then. Just as I was thinking this again, Pete said to Teressa, “How did all the cats and dogs survive? Where did they go?” Teressa said they probably got up in the barn loft, which is just above the watermark on the barn wall. “I think they’re little enough, they could swim and get somewhere safe.”

        Kenny Ray was busier than ever this time. For once, he wasn’t there to meet us when we pulled in. At first glance, the whole place looked deserted, except for the myriad kitties swirling around and Teressa’s two heelers. Even the people who had been camping in tents in Kenny Ray’s yard were gone. The tents, the chairs, the clothes hanging on lines looped from tree to tree seemed abandoned. We noticed that the house was now covered with the ubiquitous blue tarp. But Teressa soon appeared. She said Kenny Ray had gone to pick up one of his tractors from a pasture several miles away. I groaned and told her we had two tons of feed to unload. She said Kenny Ray was on his way back—he’d be here any minute. We started unloading feed. Of course, Kenny pulled in just as we unloaded the last hay bale, so we got a chance to tease him about his good timing avoiding all that work. He’s an ideal person to tease about being lazy because you’d have to get up mighty early to catch him not working.

        Not only is he trying to rebuild and help everyone and his brother, he’s taken a job as a night watchman at the dump. “Why are they guarding the dump?” I asked Pete later. We couldn’t think of an answer. Who’s going to steal junk from a dump when every street is lined with piles of identical refuse? But Kenny Ray joked that he had finally found a way he could get paid to sleep. That’s good, because it seems to be the only way he’ll get any sleep. He told me he is thinking about how to get the feed store open. Still no sign of the Army Corps bunch that was going to help him doze the old feed store. But, he thinks they can set up shelves in the back warehouse, which was relatively unscathed in the flood, and operate out of there until they get the front rebuilt. Teressa told me that several of their boarders are coming back. People who had fled the area and moved their horses up to Kiln will be coming back to Lakeshore and bringing their horses with them.

        Pete went to look at Kenny Ray’s tractor while Teressa told me about their “tent people.” These were the people Kenny had allowed to camp in their yard—people from out of state who had come into the area to work. Teressa said she was home alone one day last week and all the sudden eight police cars came flying down their street, lights flashing, and descended on the “Tent Boys” from Alabama. One of the men took off running through the woods with police in hot pursuit. He was soon caught and all of the men were arrested. It turned out they were stealing generators from local people and re-selling them. This was the first time I had heard Teressa sound really angry and disgusted. “Imagine those people coming in here where people have lost everything, and stealing from them,” she said. “Especially doing Kenny Ray that way—he’d do anything for anybody. Then they had the nerve to come back and ask him if they could still stay here! He told them to clear off.”

        I went to look at Kenny’s tractor. He was bragging on it. “I leave it sit out in the field. It gets rained on. But it always starts on the second turn.” He’s not sure how much water got to it in the flood. “I had a Ford that wouldn’t go at all if it was wet. That’s a Massey-Ferguson. That’s a good tractor.” As they roll it off the trailer, Kenny turns the key. It turns twice and fires. Happiness radiates from him as he drives it away, sitting tall and nodding almost imperceptibly as if chuckling to himself.

        While I was talking to Teressa, Pete had been visiting with a fellow named Marvin who said he was having minor success growing rye-grass in Lakeshore. I went over to listen to his story. “I’ve got to get something growing,” he told us. “I’ve got thirteen cows to feed and all my Bahia (grass) is dead.” He told us he had a big field he usually cuts for hay, but of course it was ruined by salt water and sludge. I’ve been wondering if anyone is doing or has done studies of rye grass—specifically its capacity to take up various elements in the soil. I hope it would have a cleansing effect on the soil, but if so, it makes me worry about what we’re dumping into the horses and cattle that graze on it. It may be one of those unavoidable evils, and just one more thing to worry about.

        Marvin was talking about the tornadoes that had hit in Indiana this week. He pronounces it “turnadas.” He was comparing the devastation of “turnadas” to that of “hairikins.” “Turnadas” have terrible power, but they’re gone quick, and they only hit a narrow path. “Hairikins,” he said, stay around for hours—even days. He lives a couple of miles from Kenny, and was home when Katrina hit. He said they could see the water coming down the street—just a trickle at first. A few minutes later though, “it were up to here” (he bent down and put his hand at ankle-level). Within a half hour (now he put his hand at waist-level), “it were up to here.” He and his wife went up to the attic. As the water rose higher and higher, he began trying to hack a hole in his roof with an axe, but the house was too solidly built and he “gave out.” Fortunately, they were on high enough ground that the attic was not completely inundated.

        Kenny also tells about the water coming down the street. “We were just standing there, dumbfounded,” he says. “At first it was just a little bit. But then it was rolling in with whitecaps on top.” Teressa says she still hasn’t gotten over her horror of the snakes. “The guys were picking them up and throwing them out of the house. I was just screaming and crying—I was a big baby.” “People were trying to swim out,” Kenny goes on, “but the trees and everything in the water, that’s what killed some of them. I saw someone catch onto a wire of some kind and hold on there until the water went down.” Melvin laughed and said someone could catch onto a telephone wire way off the ground and then be left hanging there when the water all went back out. I asked them how fast the water went out. “Fast,” Teressa said. “In forty-five minutes it was back down to about a foot.” She says again that “it’s a good thing it wasn’t ‘dahwk’ (as she pronounces dark), because people had more of a chance being able to see what was around them.”

        Marvin asks us where we’re from, and how long a drive it is for us. We tell him about 6 hours, one-way. He begins to tell us about taking his daughter to barrel racing contests when she was young. “One week it was to Tennessee, then to Florida, Louisiana, then back to Mississippi. “I must’ve put a 100,000 miles on that truck, but she was a Junior World Champion. She’s married now and has been a schoolteacher for 11 years. Now she takes her daughter—who’s 11—to competitions almost every weekend.” I know one day human genome researchers are going to find a horse-gene in human DNA. They’ll all be amazed, astounded. The discovery will make the front page of Nature. Only horse-people won’t find it the least bit surprising.

        As we were getting ready to leave I told Teressa and Bonnie if they could think of anything in particular that would help, to let me know and we would try to get it. Bonnie said, “Horslyx—Feed in a Tub.” This was a new one on me. Apparently it’s a block-like lick similar to a mineral lick, but also contains limited nutrition. She told me she felt it would really help the horses in this area. “The other thing that would really help is fencing,” she said. We talked about the types of terrain they have and what would be the fastest, most efficient way to get more area fenced. Step-in posts and electric tape with chargers seemed to be the best choice. I told her we would try to bring some. And, of course, rye-grass seed.

        Please continue helping our friends in Lakeshore. We are making progress, but we’re not out of the woods yet. Electric tape, step-in posts, chargers, and grass seed are much needed. Email me if you have items you would like me to pick up. Cash donations go for feed, hay, fencing, seed and fuel and can be mailed directly to me at 1939 Sand Basin Road, Grand Ridge, FL 32442.

        A huge thanks to Laurie Kelly and her friends for their unflagging support. And likewise to Grace Jaye, Carole Dalton, Jennifer Gould, and Megan Gardiner for generous donations and steadfast spirits.

        News of our efforts has spread far and wide. People are continually sending me newspaper articles about our work and I have received donations from as far away as Arizona and Massachusetts. It makes me realize how special our community is—this group of people who may never have met one another face to face, but who nevertheless have joined forces to help fellow horse lovers and their beloved horses recover from this historic, devastating event. I feel very fortunate to live among such people, and I thank you all for what you are making possible.

        Cheers!

        Sara Warner