The night before last - actually the wee hours of the morning before last - Hub and I were awakened by the sound of whimpering dogs.I think I've told you before that our Yard Dogs come inside to sleep at night - on their twin-size egg-crate foam bed with the fleece blankets. Not a bad setup.
Except when it storms. They are deathly afraid of thunder and lightning. When it rains, the big bad-ass chow dog acts like hot, molten lead is falling from the sky. The minute a raindrop lands on his handsome puppy head he runs under the house (we have a huge crawlspace under our house) and hides until the shower passes.
On Tuesday evening when it was MONSOONING here in North Alabama, the dogs were - needless to say - all huddled up under the house in, in a big, warm, dark puppy nest and didn't even come out to eat dinner.
So at three o'clock in the morning when the whining commenced, Hub thought it was because they were hungry. The rain had stopped, so he went outside to feed them.
That's when I heard the big, "Oh, Shit."
It turns out that the monsoon dumped enough rain to flood our yard and the crawlspace under our house - three to four feet of standing water...which the dogs didn't want to cross. You expect us to get wet? Are you mad, woman? So they thought they were trapped and they complained mightily.
So Hub walked down to the other end of the house (our house is situated halfway up - or down - a long, gradual hill leading to the river) and opened the other little crawlspace door so scardy-pups could get out.
Upon closer examination of the new lake under our kitchen, Hub realized the hot water heater had burst. Apparently the water got high enough to mess with the electrics and - boom - more water. Nice.
He turned off the power to most of the house - not knowing what kind of wiring is down there - and we went back to bed. By now it's 4:30 and the alarm goes off at 5:30. Fabulous. I looked at him and said, "You know it's going to be a bad day when...."
The happy ending is that Hub is a master of all trades: he pumped out all the water, pulled the water heater, replaced it with a spiffy new heater (not and "instant hot" like I wanted, but a nice one nonetheless), and began drying out the crawlspace.
And then the second storm moved through last night. We're expecting another 4-6 inches of rain - turning to snow - today.
I believe I am going to build an ark, y'all. I already have two dogs, two cats (okay, three) and two almost-pet squirrels. I can get my hands on "two of" a whole passel of different birds. I'd say we're off to a good start.
Image Credit: NYTimes
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