Aftermath

I am not up to telling you all what you already have heard about the effects of the hurricane.  I was very, very lucky this time, but it was horrible waiting through the storm, thinking about what might happen.  There is much damage around me and worse.  Now it is just miserable.  A certain joi de vivre was taken away.  It will come back, perhaps, but it is too soon.

Just an observation here, and a wondering.  There used to be thousands of squirrels in the neighborhood.  There are networks of oak limbs.  They could run above the ground for miles.  They are gone.  Only here and there do I come across one on my walks, and they certainly looked stunned. Traumatized, really.  Strangely, though, I don't come across any dead ones, and I wonder. . . where did they go?  What do squirrels do when the wind blows a hundred miles per hour?

Conversely, there are butterflies everywhere.  Where did they come from?  Very strange after such a storm.

Yesterday, I watched and listened to a lone hawk.  It was crying out.  For its mate?  For its offspring? It called then flew, higher in ever expanding circles, a heart-wrenching cry.

I take the Vespa around town to look at the damage.  There is much.  But the old live oaks withstood the storm by and large, dropping limbs but staying upright mostly.  Past the graveyard, I took my only picture.  I do not have a good eye for human suffering.  It always looks banal, but it is truly something else.