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During the week, several of our teams operating near the Back Bay in East Biloxi noticed a bunch of dogs living under a wrecked house. The dogs were quite friendly and obviously in need of food and some attention. Nate, one of the volunteers gave them some water and a granola bar-- all he had with him at the time. He asked me to go over the next day and find the dogs and take them some food.
Along with Ginger, one of the nurses, I went over to the neighborhood and found the hiuse. After walking around a bit and whistling, they emerged from under the house one at a time. Three of the dogs were beautiful pure-bred boxers. Another was a sorry looking little mop, a King Charles spaniel, who obviously was sick. One of the boxers was a recent mom who had lost her litter when the storm hit. The other two boxers were eight months old and from her previous litter. Mommy Boxer was obviously caring for them and for the sorry little spaniel.
When you go into a neighborhood and walk or stand around for a while, people begin to emerge from the rubble to see what's going on and talk. A Vietnamese lady from two houses away came over to speak with us. She was the owner of the boxers and was apparently raising them with profit in mind. She hadn't been feeding them, had little interest in them, and gave us permission to take them to the Humane Society.
Here's Ginger and the Vietnamese lady.
Sarah Waterman had noticed the dogs on a previous visit to the neighborhood. She had previously owned a boxer and decided it would be a good chance to adopt a couple of pure-bred boxers. So we mounted a dog-catching expedition the next day using Marc's truck. Mam boxer surrendered right away along with one of her daughters. But five of us spent the rest of the morning trying to catch the other sister, without success. A neighbor owned the little mop spaniel and when he came to pick him up, the spaniel screamed in terror and tried to get away. We're sure he's abused and he was obviously neglected so we convinced the nieghbor to let us take him along to get medical treatment.
Off to the Humane Society, who accepted Mama boxer and the mop dog. Mama will go north soon to be adopted. We told the Humane Society people the story of the spaniel. If the people don't come pick him up in five days, under Mississippi law, the Humane Society can take custody and ship him north. We seriously doubt the owners of the spaniel will bother to drive across town to reclaim him, so he's probably safe.
Here's momma Sarah with her new baby girl:
Someone went back today and lured the remaining boxer with some hotdogs, so now the two sisters are safely and happily ensconced in the "Colony"-- the tent city out behind our base camp. I may drive one of them north with me to its new home.
Here are the kids from Warren-Wilson College in Asheville, NC, ripping out a kitchen. They came down here on their school break and really kicked butt.
Loading up for a job in the morning. We have a whole shed full of tools and equipment:
Tom from Newton, Mass., spent some time here organizing the office:
Lesson learned: Don't send clothes, send money. Here is a parking lot (I saw others even larger) full of clothing that's been dumped, spread out, and picked through. What else can you do with tons of used clothing, after all? So now it's been rained on a few times and will eventually be scooped up by a bucket loader.
Here's my car parked in front of a condemned house. Many such houses will have to be bulldozed.
We were on a cleanout and interior demolition job. There's nothing worse than having to remove tons of still-soggy furniture, clothing, and personal effects. As usual, we appropriated some of the big BFI trashcans from nearby houses, parked them outside windows, and threw stuff outside to lug to the streetside.
Bob spent an hour cleaning out a closet that had stuff piled to the ceiling. The owners had an appropriate sign pasted on the wall next to the closet.
The high point of the operation was the refrigerator which of course was full of spoiled food and water. Keep in mind that this brew had matured fully seven weeks since the storm! We've all discussed this and there's no way we can describe the odor. Several of the young bucks who actually performed the removal (fridges are heavy!) had to take a break while they lost their lunch.
Here's the refrigerator halfway to the street, leaking all the way.
