A Flooding Day

My last post was about a rainy day, "a lovely day," I said, "my kind of day." Well, sometimes rain is not so lovely. That "lovely" rain turned into a national-news-deserving flood, just 8" below our record flood for the area. It certainly was not a funny April Fool's Day joke! Below is an email I sent out during the storm:

"We live on Fish River (Fairhope, AL - between Mobile, AL and Pensacola, FL and just up from Gulf Shores, AL). Our river has already flooded 22' over its banks today. Our house is up 28' from the river, so we're fine, but some of our neighbors' homes have already flooded. These are houses that, just 7 months ago, suffered damage from Hurricane Ivan and were since remodeled. Some neighbors' houses are on stilts and right now those houses are literally islands (with the neighbors in them!)!

We are getting hugely ignored from even the local news so there was no warning about this, other than that there was going to be some thunderstorms today. Please pray for our neighbors and for us, too, for safety and all. The neighbors say it has never flooded this far in the past 10+ years, even in Hurricanes Ivan and Danny.

You all might like knowing that at 6:30am, my Hero Husband rowed our rowboat out across our flooded backyard and saved 9 of my 10 chickens. We woke up to the water already up to the level of their perch, which is 10' above the river. I immediately became a frantic mess, so worried about "my girls." I wished for chickens for over 12 years before we could move to the country, so I love those dumb birds! It was too dangerous to swim out to their pen, though, with the swift current and the lightning.

That's how Tim ended up in the boat. By the time he got there, the water was over the perch and the hens were clinging sideways to the chicken wire surrounding their pen (we have an open-air pen, with only chicken wire around it). One perished before he got to them. Two have lost 1/2 of their feathers from the struggle. And all look hilarious as they are wet and worried. Like Noah, Tim put the chickens in the boat. On the way back, though, the rope broke that was anchoring him to a tree on dry land. The current was terribly swift -- too swift to row. There was a real danger of Tim and the hens and the boat being carried away. Tim clung to a tree, trying to get the boat to move closer to land. I called a neighbor on the phone meanwhile. The neighbor finally came -- I thought he'd come with a kayak or a rope, but instead he just dove into the water and pulled the boat, Tim , and the chickens to safety! (he's an artist, kind of eccentric, you know)

It hasn't stopped raining yet and won't for a few more hours,they say, so please do pray for us and for our neighbors."