Tornados in a Teapot

Saturday, May 1st, 2010 was super fun in the Memphis area while we all did the Tornado Tango awash in 5-14 inches of rain, depending on location. Those are numbers I've seen before, however, it was May 1995 in New Orleans where we were the lucky recipients of 16.5" of rain in a half a day or so. Casualties included my Mazda, my boyfriend's Mustang, the entire first floor of the apartment complex, my co-worker's sanity (his dog developed diarrhea when there was no longer ground to go on), and anything in New Orleans lower than the interstate, which was pretty much the whole city.

What was a new twist was the frequency of tornado sirens sounding starting at 4AM Saturday morning ending around 2AM on Sunday morning.  We've heard those before of course, but we didn't have quite as many animals back then, and we hadn't been subjected to so many tornadoes actually aiming at us 4 separate times in 24 hours.  Fat Pony Farms is less than a mile from the state line, so we get Mississippi sirens too for variety.

Between checking the TV weather radar and rounding up cats (five), I googled around to see what else I should be doing for Mr. Dublin (horse), since he didn't fit in the pantry as well as the two large dogs did. He was loose out attending to the organic mobile weed eating service he founded, as one look at the inside of our barn indicates that he would be nothing but a pincushion if a tornado touched it.

Al Gore's famous internet revealed just how far horses might bolt during a tornado (a few miles), and that we should have had a fancy brass tag on his halter, which he should also be wearing with contact numbers, and possibly even microchipped. So much for pre-planning. (We normally don't turn out in halters, in case they get caught on something--we prefer our horses nekkid.)

By the third round of tornadoes, we managed to get a labeled leather halter (breaks in emergency) on him, and Old Man wrote our phone numbers, also including Mom's out-of-the-disaster-area number on his back with Sharpie marker where the saddle goes, and "Sarah Hadskey" down his spine. Dublin said it tickled.  Tornado missed us all:  5 cats, 2 large dogs, 10 new mosquito fish, and Mr. Dublin safe and sound. Score: Hadskey's 20, mother nature zero.