Hurricane Dean comes calling…

I’m a little behind on the blog due to a fellow named Dean. Fortunately, I live south of where the hurricane did its damage, but on Monday morning no one was sure of where it might go. The area was being evacuated due to the impending winds potentially bringing down trees. In case you haven’t guessed, there are a lot of trees in the jungle. There was also a chance of flooding so it was time to batten down, pack up, leave the cats a mountain of food and head out towards the western border. The chickens would have to fend for themselves.

My car refused to start.

I walked three miles to the jungle lodge where my friend worked and saw that everyone was preparing to get out of there too. Ellen lent me her car and I headed back to the house to finish getting things out of harms way.

I packed up anything breakable and stowed them in the cupboards, bagged pictures, books and magazines, then stuffed anything loose under the beds.

It was starting to blow pretty good now, and the rain reminded me of an autumn drizzle in Canada.

After packing a bag, I coaxed the dog into the car and drove back to the lodge. Ellen decided the best place to go would be San Ignacio where her niece lived, so off we went into the wild rainy west!

The weather in San Ignacio didn’t even hint at a hurricane going one close by. It was raining a little, but that was it.

I had a friend who lived very close to Ellen’s niece, so I borrowed Ellen’s car again and drove over to see her. She had company too. Relatives from Belize City had come down to shelter with her. Cindy wasn’t the least bit worried about the weather, she figured God would sort all that out. She was very upset about her parrot Pepper though. Apparently he was frightened by the visitors and flew out the window to a neighbor’s tree across the street. She could hear him squawking but he wouldn’t come home. There wasn’t much I could do to help so I went back and watched some television.

Now T.V. is a big deal for me since I don’t get to watch it in the jungle. We all huddled around and watched CNN to see what Dean was up to. At that point he was battering Corozal in the north of Belize and Chetumal in Mexico and heading across the bay towards Veracruiz. It’s seems we’re safe and Dean is losing steam.