When we bought our present
house there was no need for flood insurance because the house is near
the top of a hill and all entrances into the house faced away from the downward
slope. Natural flooding would never
reach us…..except maybe on a Noah-Ark scale.
Yes, we could get water damage inside from a broken water pipe, but
otherwise, our house is not floating away anytime soon.
The exception is Frankie’s
house. It does face the downward
slope. Really, I hadn’t given it all
that much thought.
Greg did install a water
grate on the upward side so water would not get under his house and sweep it
away.
Still, we overlooked that
front door positioned at ground level.
Hurricane Lee would point out this error in thinking.
Hurricanes this far in
land (Birmingham
is half way up state from the coast) usually brings several days of 24 hour
rain with no stop that results in flooding.
We’ve never been worried.
Yesterday, during the
second day of non-stop rain, seeing Frankie outside on the lawn did catch my
attention. He grazed in one spot for a
while but soon walked back toward his house.
A couple hours later, I ventured out in the pouring rain to check on
him.
Frankie was sitting next to his house during a down pour. Not only that, but Frankie blocked water behind him like a damn.
“Frankie!” I say.
“Get in your house!” I proceed to
drag him toward his front door. All the
water building up behind him gushed past him and ran ankle-deep over me.
“Crap,” I say, which isn’t far from the truth since the water has been soaking in sulcata poop for two days. Kneeling down in the rushing Frankie-poop river water, I shove Frankie into his house. I return to my house dripping wet from rain and soaked in Frankie-poop water. I go clean up.
No other thought passes my
mind about Frankie until post dinner when the temperature outside starts
dropping below 75ยบ F. I consider that I should turn on Frankie’s heat pad in
his house.
I get outside to the
backyard and find Frankie sitting next to his house again. “Frankie!” I yell.
This time I notice as I
push him in his door that water and poop is running out of his front door. I
open his house (it’s still raining), lift the inner lid and see a inch of
poop-water in Frankie’s house.
“Ah, crap.” And I am right, again.
No wonder he didn’t want
to stay in his enclosure. This is a
week’s worth of poop completely soaked in rain. He didn't want to sit shell-deep
in poop water.
Facing the facts, I
retrieve the purple pooper scooper to muck out his house (yes, it is still
raining). On my knees, I scrape water
and poop from the back of his enclosure to the front of the enclosure. The poop exits out the door but the water
flows back inside.
Outside I spy that rain
around Frankie’s house is backed up from debris, poop,
leaves and rocks. I abandon the inside and go to outside to muck debris away
from his house.
Then I notice that Greg’s
water grate on the side of Frankie’s house is backing up. I go around the other side and the emitter is
not draining. I pull the whole emitter
off the drain pipe and buckets of poop and debris gush out over my shoes, legs
and hands. Within a few moments the only
thing draining is rain water. At least
the clog is gone.
Sometimes I wonder why I
bother to shower at all.
I finish clearing debris
from all around Frankie’s enclosure so water drains away from his front door
and into back into the yard. Time to
finish mucking out his house.
Starting from the back and
scraping toward the front, I move poop-water toward the exit. The muck splashes all over me and my arms are
covered in it.
Eventually all the muck
and water is pushed out of Frankie’s enclosure.
Now it is time to push Frankie back inside. And I do. He drags more muck so I have a bit
more to clean out.
Frankie does not want to
sit on a damp floor (I don’t blame him).
I take my wet, filthy, poop-covered self inside my house to fetch
newspapers. When I return Frankie is
half way out of his house again. I push
him back inside. I muck out what he’s
dragged in.
Newspapers are set down
all over and Frankie is dragged over. I
place more newspapers around him.
Frankie is dried with a towel to make him more comfortable.
Tucked in his nearly dry
enclosure, his heat pad slowly warming up, Frankie is finely satisfied he will
not be floating in water. Still, I block
his front door so he stays inside and maybe keep some more rain from coming in.
I check again that all
water is flowing nicely around his enclosure and not being blocked or diverted
into his house.
About this time, Greg
starts banging on the window trying to get my attention. I start yelling that I can’t hear him over
the rain which is coming down in buckets. I give him the “one moment” hand
signal and head into the house.
“What?!” I ask.
“You need to get in the
house.” He replies, rather irritated.
Yikes! Are we under a
tornado warning?”
“No,” he says, “You don’t
need to be standing out there in the cold rain.”
You think?
Once again, Frankie proves that 1.) Anything can happen with a sulcata around, 2) I can’t think of everything so must be prepared for anything, and 3) the possibilities of Frankie stories is endless
And I thought scooping out cat litter boxes was a chore! You are a very devoted Frankie-Mom, and I hope for everyone's sake the rain has stopped.
ReplyDeletewell this made me think of when i took pledges to a high school club out and made them run thru a winerys settling field. yucko stinko! maybe his house needs to built up on some stilts Leann. haha!
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