Feeling Blue

This morning was a tough one. The nightmares were back in force last night, and I woke up feeling melancholy, frustrated and just plain sad.

As I walked Comet around the block, I felt like I was in a trance. At one point, I looked up at one of the homes I was passing. The neighborhood is residential and could easily have passed for one in the New Orleans neighborhood of Lake View. For a flicker of a second, I thought it strange not to see the high-water mark on the house before me. When it registered that this was California and not New Orleans, it occurred to me that this is how those neighborhoods in New Orleans must have looked before the storm hit, before the floods changed the residents forever.

As I walked along, I realized that I was listening for sounds of barking, meowing and chirping. I've become accustomed to listening to that silence, knowing that I will hear nothing, but hoping that I will. At 5:30 am, there is little movement on the street, but even the slightest ruffle of a leave causes me to spin around in hopes of seeing a dog scurrying nearby. Here, there are no tin cake pans filled with water, or bright plastic dishes with food because these animals are safe and loved and cared for. It's strange, but I miss that. I miss being able to give an abandoned pet some relief after a month of trauma and confusion. I miss coaxing and baiting a scared animal into a crate, knowing that he's got a better chance of being reunited with his owner by coming with me than staying another night on the streets.

And though I know how many furry lives we saved, I am haunted by the number we could not get to, and frustrated by the number that remain trapped today. A large part of me wants to turn right around and dive back into the wasteland of New Orleans, and truthfully, I'm not sure why I haven't done just that.

Having a simple conversation is tough. I have so many other things running through my brain that I find myself not being able to listen to people. I'm not ready, I guess. I feel raw and inside out, and I don't want to minimalize my experience by stepping it down to smalltalk. It doesn't seem fair.

Going through all the pictures last night was good for me, but I don't think I've even begun to ingest the whole of this experience. At the same time, I started to notice what stories the pictures are telling. I took the photos and the video with the idea that stories as powerful as these didn't need a writer, they needed a listener. And when I watched and observed and listened last night, those stories began to emerge. For me, I think this will be part of the healing process. I was so busy, so engaged and so stressed in New Orleans that I didn't have time to really take in the situation around me. In some ways it felt like being in the middle of M*A*S*H. Everything is an emergency and time is always running out.

Our group was small, but we had a strong core group. Every day, new people that came to help rescue, take care of the dogs in the kennel (who had been rescued days before) and to bring food or water. There were also kind samaritans who walked up and handed us $20 just for doing what were were doing. It was amazing.

The core group of us awoke every day at 6:30 and immediately began to walk, feed, and water the animals. We also cleaned poopy crates, shampooed sodden animals, applied flea and other medicines, and checked on animals being treated at the vet. This was usually done before any of us brushed our teeth, changed our clothes or had morning coffee. Around 9 am we would start the crazy process of mapping out addresses and planning which rescues would be attempted that day. Long days of rescuing ensued. Some addreses we checked on would yield empty houses where we might simply leave food and water. Some houses had to be broken into in search of an abandoned dog, cat or goat (yes, we were called out to check on one!). Sometimes we simply came across packs of animals on the street, some willing to come with us, others running away the minute we hopped out of the car. There were cases of live animals still chained to porches, ladders and fences and sad stories of animals who had not managed to escape the high flood waters. There were just so many stories it is hard to imagine how we will ever be able to chronicle them all.

We rescued every night until darkness set in, and then we hightailed it out of the city. It was not a safe place to be after dark. In the more ravaged areas, there were unsavory folks hiding out and our last wish was to come across one. After returning to our safe little kennel/tent site (aka "CAMP RITE-AID"...a little green lot between a Rite-Aid and a 24-hour bar called, "The Pit Stop" in Jefferson Parish), the core group (Eric, Billy, Lisa, Lacey and I) would walk dogs, feed, water, and clean, and then around 10:30 we'd all collapse...sometimes in chairs with rolls of paper towels in our arms (Eric), sometimes next to a dog with diarrhea who liked to eat his own poop (Lisa), sometimes at the dinner table after the first margarita and before the spinach dip (Me). Imagine why I'm tired now.

All in all, it was one of the very best experiences of my life. I learned so much and was part of something really special. We saved many animal lives and brought rays of hope into the lives of people who thought they'd lost everything. It was something that you just can't put a price on.