Long night

The death toll from last night’s tornadoes has topped fifty. Not surprising, I guess. I can’t remember such long bout of severe storms. Usually these violent fronts move through quickly, and it’s all over in an hour, often less. This round was an all-night ordeal, ten hours straight. I’m not especially jumpy where tornadoes are concerned, but it’s still incredibly nerve-wracking, sitting around wondering how much attention to pay to the warnings. Even if a tornado has been spotted in the area, it’s usually a waste of time and energy to take shelter, since your odds of being hit are as slim as winning the lottery. That’s what’s so cruel about tornadoes. They wipe out a family here, a home there, but leave everyone else unaffected--except for the fear.

Almost everybody feels the fear, even my dogs. Pearl and Kobi each have a special ritual response to the rage of the thunder god. Pearl is of the “duck and cover” school. At the first sign of bad weather, she finds a place to hide and hunkers down, trembling violently, until she decides the danger is past. Kobi is the panicky girl. She pants, whimpers, drools, attacks the water bowl, claws the walls, etc. etc. I’ve tried tranquilizers, valerian, Rescue Remedy, behavior modification--you name it. Nothing really calms her when she gets going. She will not tolerate being crated or tied. I usually resort to sitting beside her with my hand on her collar, just to keep her from hurting herself or destroying my house. Sometimes even that won’t work, in which case I just open the back door and let her go apeshit outside. It’s not the safest option during a really violent storm, but she actually seems to prefer it. If she ever gets hit by lightning I’ll feel guilty, but as I said, dealing with storms here is all about playing the odds.

Nio, the blissful boy dog, is oblivious to threatening weather, although he does enjoy howling along with the tornado sirens. He’ll watch the girls go through their various conniptions and look at me as if to say, “What ails them?” I wonder myself. Sad to say, I think the phobic pups have spent their lives a little too close to humans. Nio spent his first two years outdoors, untended, and he’s a little more at peace with world and all the things he can’t control in it. He’s not going to worry about the worst until it happens. I wish we could all be more like him.




Tornado in Howard, South Dakota, 1884. Photo via Wikimedia Commons