Friday, September 9, 2011

It's Personal

When I started working where I am now, about 7 years ago, I met a woman (Diane) who turned out to be the sister of a woman (Deb) I had worked with at another facility about 15 years ago (yikes, maybe longer!). Anyway, Deb and I had been friends the way many people are sometimes at work, which is to say not outside of work. But I liked her a lot, and was happy to learn from Diane that Deb had gotten married, no children, and she and her husband had a place in the country and were raising a small herd of about 7 horses. It sounded like she was very happy and living an idyllic life.

But their place in the country was outside of Bastrop and on Tuesday I learned from Diane that it had burned to the ground. What about the horses?? I asked, and Diane said that they had just enough time to load up the dogs and cats and a few belongings and that they had turned the horses loose. Today I found out that six of the horses died, there is one missing. They never left the pen.

The news stories will cover the property losses (which are horrible) and will talk about how lucky we are that there have been few deaths (human), which is good. But not many accounts will talk about the loss of wildlife and livestock, which is rampant across our state and which is heartbreaking.

1 comment:

Julie said...

That is so sad about her horses. These fires are just awful, and no rain is predicted perhaps for months and months.