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Labels: blog

Last night I read Jack London's South Sea Tale about a hurricane that storms over a small South Pacific atoll. The native pearl divers cling to the tops of cocoanut trees, until the terrific wind uproots trees and casts the natives into the lagoon to drown. As I read, the dark sky outside condensed into small black cloud of fury, and then let loose all its anger on the Galloway house alone. Wind, rain, wind! The house creaked from that mad wind that cavorted through town, the roof drummed from all the cats and frogs that fell on it.

The Galloway house was well prepared - you know those California houses are expensive for a good reason, right? In this case, the auto-buoyancy controls kicked in with the go-go-rubber-raft settings, allowing the house to float above the lake that was forming in the yard.

At 8:30am, I could hear the consternation in Shan's voice outside the house. Later, I learned the extent of the wind's damage: a broken window, a pushed over fence and gate, shingles scattered about the yard, a leaking garage, and a flooded fish pond. Worse, one of the three garden penguins decided to take flight, like Mary Poppins, off to the land of Oz. After a hunt through the alley way and the backyard, Shan finally found the penguin, returned from its plastic, neverland dream, and hiding underneath the fallen fence.

Labels: book, galloways, rain, usa