HURRICANE HELENE 9-26-24

 

Wild dog pack howling like a group reunion of Baskerville hounds. Read that here in NPR, a coyote killed a Chihuahua. So sad but wondered do coyotes live East of the Mississippi? Wiley E Coyote bombing Roadrunner with Acme dynamite. Silly, but the real thing gave me a fright. Imagination in the night not an asset.

 

Tornado Warning amidst Category 4 winds a double jeopardy. Overkill of an unwanted accessory.

 

Shadows of the Mulberry tree reached out to me until I had to stop reading the spooky novel Nevermore, about Conan Doyle, Poe, and Houdini. In the dark, felt so sure the tree was blocking the exit and I’d never be able to leave my prison Scared while those glass doors rattled so I hid under my blanket and pillow like a little girl believing in monsters.

 

Alarms blasting from my cellphone insisting I evacuate my mobile home. Why doesn’t the government arrange for more and closer shelters, earlier in the day? Or a bus to pick me up? More dangerous to drive in a hurricane in the dark doom of helter-skelter.

 

Hard to see where landfall would be, so looked up latitude & longitude. Got it backwards as usual:  I thought longitude (with the word “long” inside) meant tall or North-South and latitude (sounding like “Aw, give her a break, she’s wide but beautiful”) therefore meant East-West but no, opposite. My autism, not yours, my personal ASD confusing me. Still, I could see that landfall would be a hair away from New Port Richey.

 

So after two over-adrenalized days, with 2 hours sleep equaling four, finally collapsed when the wind followed the rain up through Georgia. Next hurricane? I’m grabbing my dogs and getting outta here. Not many motels around but don’t need a breakdown. I just need solid walls – a room with no view – and no bad déjà vu…

 

© 2024 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE:  Hurricane Moon