"The Rains Came Down and the Floods Came Up"

"The rains came down and the floods came up..." is an old camp song which before today was simply that, a tune to sing with hand gestures. Great fun. But today the rains came...with a vengeance.

My husband and I were walking along the riverfront. A lady turtle was busy laying eggs in a carefully crafted hole in the soft soil. First the darkening of the skies then the rumble of thunder. When a bolt of lightening struck the earth I thought twice about holding on to a metal-handled umbrella; do I keep my hair dry or risk being electrocuted? Let's just say I was, and am, having a great hair day. Winds whipped around the water and we made a bee-line for the car.

By the time we returned home the roads and fields were flooded. Police asked everyone to stay off the roads. Although it was implied that it would be hard with the rushing water to stay on the road. When these kinds of things happen our backyard, which is carefully graded to have a drainage ditch that flows into the neighbor's ditch and the into their neighbor's and so on, began to fill up with water.

Kat Karson's legs got short, always a sign and symptom of his anxiety. His pitiful soft meowing does not befit a feline of his size. King of the Beasts, my foot.

The electricity stayed on which doesn't always happen and we rode out the storm at home.

Thirty-nine calls came in for police rescue of stranded motorists, twelve water rescues,18 hazard calls from motorists who were stuck behind abandoned cars on the roadways. These water events always bring out some doofus who thinks that a pick-up truck with a rebel flag, gun rack and hunting dog in it can drive through a flooded roadway and find themselves slowly floating away into ditches and fields and sometimes over bridges. Doofuses!

By the time it took to type out this weather report the rain has stopped and the sun in shining and the clean-up begins. And that's what I think about it.