Fall 2017 Saber Tails 41
Petit Basset Griffon Vendéen Club of America
the Peebs, she would rather die than be separated from us. Running away is sim-
ply NOT in her vocabulary. We also had 7 leashes in the room in case we needed
to round up dogs and get out. In the den, just outside our bedroom door, slept
Apple’s litter of 5 five-week old puppies with a laundry basket nearby to serve as
their emergency escape pod. Every single one of us sat straight up in bed at 1:34!
Bill hurried down the hallway to check the house and I ran to check all the dogs
and the saltwater tanks. With the power out, we started up the battery operated
air stones as aquarium life supports. Bill made it back to bed shortly after me and
announced that a tree had fallen on the house. That’s not something you hear
every day!
In the morning, I was saddened to see that we had lost two giant, old pecan trees.
One was twisted off about 20 feet up and the other had been pushed over into
the attic and garage with the canopy resting on about 1/3 of the roof. The trees
had obviously been hit by a small tornado as the one tree looked like someone
literally grabbed it at the base and the top and twisted it into until the top came
free. We were lucky and an amazing tree crew came to our rescue and had the
tree completely cut off the roof by nightfall. Unfortunately, lightning and rain
became fierce before they were able to cover the roof with tarps. To avoid flood-
ing in the main part of the house,
holes were poked in the garage ceiling so the water could drain through and
not spread across the entire structure. The tree roots had broken the water
pipe from our well so we were initially without water. Another wonderful
man came and hooked us back up. A tree in the house, isn’t good, but we
considered ourselves lucky. We had electricity, water, and an amazing story
to tell. The dogs had their ultimate playground. The tree had been cut up
into hundreds of pieces that had simply been rolled off the roof in the rush
to get the job done before the next wave of the storm. Three sides of our
house had tree branch and log formations that reminded me of snowbanks
tunneled out. To the dogs, these were literal amusement parks. Diving in
head first, they spent the weekend tremendously entertained.
Our story was just beginning. The hurricane stalled dumping an unprece-
dented record-breaking 51 inches of rain in just a few days. Sunday, the pre-
dictions came in that the Brazos River would crest five feet higher than it had
the year before during the historic ‘Memorial Day Flood.’ In May 2016, we
were the only home on our street that did not flood…the water came within a few inches, but didn’t get inside. An ad-
ditional 5 feet of water would definitely mean our house was getting wet. Still…the river wasn’t predicted to crest until
Wednesday or Thursday so we
had plenty of time. And I had
blind faith that things would
work out. Living less than a
half mile from the river, we
don’t have a lot of wiggle
room. We’re on the bank that
doesn’t flood, but if the river
level rises high enough, it
backs up into the creeks and
streams that surround us…
and just keeps coming. The
only thing between us and the
The water was already high on Sunday afternoon when
our rancher neighbor rounded up his cattle and loaded
them onto trucks. We enjoyed watching the dogs jump
on and off the backs of the horses and work the cows
where the water was shallow enough for them to move
around.
Loading up the dogs and puppies and as much as we could grab before 9 am as we evacuated to our friends house -
Thank you to the Sullivans
Monroe diving head first into the tree debris
Cont’d on p 44