Pawprints of Katrina
Page 8
Gary found a plastic bottle with a screw-on lid. He folded up the note and stuffed it in the bottle along with the tube of eye salve. He found surgical tape and nylon string, and taped and tied the bottle to Himie’s collar.
Then, early the next morning, Gary slipped out of the house without the dogs hearing him, because he didn’t want them to follow. Fighting back tears, he walked away toward a staging area on Paris Road so he could be evacuated out of the area. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” Gary said. “I cried like a baby. But I knew I had to leave them. The deputies said, ‘No dogs. ’ ” Gary was bused to an evacuee center at Camp Grover in Oklahoma. “When the computers weren’t tied up,” said Gary, who had never used a PC, “I had someone put up my name and information on the Internet, so my family would know where I was.”
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, September 20, a Best Friends team was in St. Bernard Parish near the high school rescuing pets. I was with the team that day, near St. Bernard High School in Violet, when a driver in a pickup pulled up next to us. The truck had a cardboard sign taped to the doors that read “HSUS” (Humane Society of the United States). The driver asked Mike McCleese, a volunteer from Cincinnati, and me, “Are you taking dogs? We found these two dogs together a few streets over. Can you take them?”
Inside the cab were two Dachshunds who’d been picked up near what we later learned was Gary Karcher’s neighborhood. Mike said, “Sure,” as I took one and he took the other. We handed over the Dachshunds to another team member, and the dogs were loaded into the air-conditioned transport van.
Two days later, three Best Friends team members were out rescuing animals in the same vicinity when they spotted a Rottweiler. Joe Huffman was walking on the residential street when he turned a corner. Sitting behind a bush, staring at him, was Himie. The other team members joined Joe to try to coax the frightened dog to them, but he would not budge. “We went through the routine, shaking the food bowl, talking sweet to him, but nothing was working,” Joe said. Himie wouldn’t leave his spot behind the shrubs. Then Joe poured water from a bottle onto the sidewalk. “When he heard that sound, he turned his head so fast I thought he was going to get whiplash.” They were able to get a loop leash on him and then walked him to the van. Himie jumped right in and put his face in front of the air conditioner vent.
Himie’s three rescuers—Joe, John Hoenemeier, and Chuck DeVito—noticed that the Rottie had something attached to his collar: the plastic bottle Gary had taped there.
That night, after the team returned to Camp Tylertown with a van full of pets, John pulled me aside and handed me the folded note, explaining that they’d taken it from Himie’s collar. “Someone loved this dog. He took the time to write us,” John said as he handed it over. Another volunteer pointed a flashlight at the letter, and, standing at the Ellis Island admissions area, I read it aloud. About a dozen volunteers—including several men—stood in a circle, their eyes welling up with tears, as they learned the saga of Gary and Himie.
The next day, I wrote a story about Himie and the message in a bottle and filed the article with my editor. That afternoon, it was posted on the Best Friends Web site. Within an hour, readers had located Gary at a refugee center at Camp Gruber, a military base near Muskogee, Oklahoma. Readers posted comments, letting Best Friends editors know that Gary had been found. One read, “I did a search and found this listing on MSNBC’s log of messages from Katrina victims: ‘Gary Karcher, 58, LA. Safe at Camp Gruber, Braggs OK.’” It was a combination of that Internet notice—the one Gary had someone write for him—and Gary’s message in a bottle that led him back to Himie.
Within a few days, Gary was notified that Himie had been rescued and was staying at the Best Friends’ temporary animal center in Mississippi. Because Gary’s description of his mother’s dogs did not completely match the two Dachshunds rescued two days before Himie, and three or four other doxies were at the center, photos of all the dogs were mailed to Gary in Oklahoma. He called Best Friends to positively identify the two small doxies handed over on the street by the HSUS as Precious and Pudgy, the “wiener dogs” he had described in his note. Rocky, Gary’s neighbor’s dog, was never located, however.
After Gary returned to Louisiana, he and his mother lived in a FEMA trailer on commercial property, where they were not allowed to have dogs. Himie continued living at Camp Tylertown until Gary could repair his damaged house. Precious and Pudgy were placed in foster homes a couple of weeks later. Before they were sent to their temporary homes, Precious gave birth to three puppies. She was isolated from the other dogs, but her puppies died three days later.
Meanwhile, a $5,000 insurance check covered the cost of a new roof and window repairs for the Karchers’ house. Doing the majority of the work himself, Gary slowly began to restore his house, including electrical rewiring and hanging sheet rock, but the insurance money soon ran out.
Susie Duttge, who volunteered at Camp Tylertown and had met Himie, Precious, and Pudgy, learned of Gary’s plight. From her home in Lake Forest, Illinois, she started a fund to cover the costs of building materials for Gary. She collected more than $4,000 so that Gary could make the house livable for him, his mother, and their dogs. Susie later helped two other families get their pets back home, too.
Nine months after Gary reluctantly left Himie and his mother’s dogs, the Karchers were finally reunited with their pets. On May 16, 2006, the day Gary and his mother moved back into their home, Precious and Himie were driven from Mississippi for a reunion. Pudgy, who was still in foster care in Texas, was returned to them a month later.
Waiting in the front yard for Himie and Precious to arrive were Gary and Ethel. Gary grinned as Himie arrived at the Violet neighborhood in St. Bernard Parish. As soon as Himie got out of the car and stepped onto the sidewalk, his nose hit the ground and he ran all around the front yard sniffing. Then he greeted Gary by licking his hand. Gary dropped to his knees and hugged the dog he had written about. “Himie, you’re home,” Gary said. “Look around you, boy, you’re home.” Gary tossed a basketball in the front yard, and Himie fetched it and then dropped it at Gary’s feet. It was just as it had always been. “I can hardly wait to get Himie in the boat again and take him fishing with me at the Delacroix marsh.” However, he noted, after leaving Himie in the boat in the floodwater, “I hope he wants to get back in.”
In July, when Pudgy was sent home to the Karchers, Gary was also given Himie’s original collar, which still had remnants of tape on it. Presenting Gary with the original bottle was photographer Clay Myers. Instead of the note and eye salve, this time the bottle held cash. It had been passed around at a post-Katrina get-together at the Best Friends sanctuary in Utah, and employees had filled it with $400.
“I’ll never forget this,” Gary said. As for Himie, Pudgy, and Precious, Gary commented, “I know how lucky we are to get all three of our dogs back.” He vowed to never lose them again. “There won’t be a next time. I ain’t leaving these dogs again.”
For Ethel, seeing her son happy with their dogs safely home was what she had been waiting for since the storm. “All my stuff is gone,” Ethel said, “but I have my son and our dogs. That’s all I need.”
Himie’s saga is not only a story about how a dog weathered a hurricane after being left to fend for himself, but how his desperate owner, when ordered to leave his pet, searched for pen and paper so he could write a note, put it in a bottle, and tape it to Himie’s collar. It is perhaps the most extreme example of how any identification on an animal can lead the pet home again. Gary made sure that if Himie survived, someone would know who he was.
Gary left not only his own dog behind, but also his mother’s Dachshunds, Precious and Pudgy. He didn’t know whether he would see them again, but at least he did something to make it possible.
Because of the letter, Himie, Pudgy, and Precious were returned to their original home. It is proof positive, those in rescue organizations say, that some sort of identification—whether an ID tag or mic
rochip implants—is necessary to ensure that people’s pets make it home in the event of a disaster.
Shanna Wilson also penned a letter, writing it as if it were from a cat. It did not get the cats home, but it was something she wanted the felines’ new families to read so they would know what they had gone through.
Shanna had stumbled across a mama cat and her four kittens trapped in a waterlogged car and watched over them until she was able to humanely trap the mother. She took care of them while she tried to find somewhere for them to live. In late October, she learned about Best Friends and drove the mother cat and kittens two hours to Camp Tylertown. Before she left New Orleans, she wrote the following letter so that their new caregivers would know their story.
My name is Calypso and these are my four surviving children after Hurricane Katrina. Thank you Best Friends! From the bottom of all five of our little kitty-cat hearts and from the bottom of the heart of the lady who rescued us all.
We were found on the floorboard of a flooded car on the west bank of New Orleans 10 days after the storm. Our eyes were not open and we were very weak from the storm. Miss Shanna Wilson, who works at the apts where the car was, heard our pitiful cries. Because our mom was afraid of people, Miss Shanna set a cat trap for her. It took 3 days to catch her but she checked on us 4-5 times a day. At times she would try to wrap us in cold wet towels to keep us alive because it was SO HOT IN THERE!
Once we were all together in this car, Miss Shanna fed momma three times a day to keep us healthy. She held us and loved us and for that WE LOVE PEOPLE. WE ARE FRISKY AND PLAYFUL and most importantly now FAT & HAPPY! Mommy has slowly come around. Although she is still a little skittish of people, love her tirelessly and soon she will rub up against you and paw at you to get your attention. Don’t give up on her!!
Thank God for people like you. Pass our story around so we may be adopted by GOOD PEOPLE (only!!). If you can call Miss Shanna she would love to know where we all wind up!
Hurricane Katrina showed the world the intense relationship between humans and their pets. Some of the most compelling tales coming from the Gulf Coast following the storm were those about people forced, sometimes at gunpoint, to leave their animals behind. For many of those people, the only family they had left were their pets, according to New Orleans native Paul Berry, who at the time was chief operating officer for Best Friends Animal Society.
Dateline NBC’s Rob Stafford, in a feature segment about Best Friends’ rescue efforts, described people’s pets as “the forgotten victims” of Katrina. He summed it up this way: “They were reluctantly left by their fleeing owners, left behind to live in a ghost town devoid of food, clean water, and most other life.”
Many pet guardians put their own lives in jeopardy to stay behind with their animals; others were forced to say good-bye with little hope of ever seeing them again. Many were able, however, to get their animals back, or at least to hear that they had been rescued and were out of harm’s way. The difficult lessons learned are many. The most basic message for pet owners, however, is that you need to attach some identification, such as an ID tag, to a collar with your name, address, and phone number. Even using a heavy-duty marking pen to print a phone number on a pet’s fur as temporary identification works in an emergency.
7
Knock, Knock, Knocking on Heaven’s Door
A DOG NAMED SCHMOO, reluctantly left behind like so many others, is perhaps the best example of the will to live that became engrained in the Katrina pets. Her love of people saved her life.
The six cats who stayed in their neighborhood, even though their owners did not know it at the time, are another inspiring example of the strong wills that kept these animals alive against all odds.
A dog referred to as the “Survivor” and later named Marina was able to make it on the streets for twenty-one days despite packs of larger dogs going after smaller ones. Marina tried to look invisible as she huddled between a chain-link fence and a potted plant, looking up at her rescuers with both fear and a hint of hope in her eyes.
These are their stories.
As Sergeant Cliff Deutsch carried a sick and fragile dog out of a storm-damaged house, it took everything he had to stop from slipping on the sludge as he descended the stairs. Schmoo, a female Boxer and Pit Bull mix, had been trapped inside the bathroom of her home for nearly thirty days without food or water.
Sergeant Deutsch, at the time a K-9 handler and officer with the Collier (Florida) Sheriff’s Department, found the dog while conducting door-to-door searches. On foot that morning in a storm-devastated area in St. Bernard Parish, he heard a man call out from up the street that a dog might be upstairs in a nearby house. The words “1 dog rescued” were spray painted orange on the front wall of the house. On the walls or garage doors of homes, rescue patrols usually spray painted codes inside large black Xs indicating which homes had been searched, on what date, if bodies had been found, and if pets had been rescued or fed.
Cliff yelled back, “Are you sure?” and pointed to the front of the house where the writing was.
The guy hollered back, “Yeah. Go check it out.”
Cliff prepared for the worst by gearing up with a pistol, department-issued fatigues, and a bullet-resistant vest—despite triple-digit temperatures. He was skeptical but decided to investigate anyway, hoping he would not come across the same scenario as the day before when the rescue team found two dogs crushed amongst the debris, as well as bodies of people. “You could tell the dogs had been trying to get out but couldn’t,” Cliff said. He also had come across another sad case. “We thought one dog was still alive,” he said about a house he and others had searched, “but when we went in, the dog was actually curled up on the couch, dead, waiting for its master to come home.” The next day, it still haunted him. But on this day, he held out hope as he walked into the house. He could not believe the condition, saying it was “was one of the worst I’d seen.” Nevertheless, because the man on the street was so insistent, Cliff kept pushing his way through the debris. “I was slipping on the muck and the mud and tripping over everything,” he said. “The house was destroyed.”
Fearful that no animal could have survived long in a structure so damaged, Cliff remained optimistic as he searched the house. With another team member, he climbed over the rubble, pushed away debris and muck, and cleared a path to the top of the stairs. Once upstairs, Cliff stood still for a moment. That’s when he heard a faint tap, tap, tap. He followed the noise to a closed bathroom door and forced it open. Inside a gunk-filled bathtub was a dog—skinny, dirty, and exhausted. Cliff didn’t think she was alive, but then she started wagging her tail again. She was dehydrated, emaciated, and unable to bark. After all she had been through, she was able to muster up enough energy to wag her tail against the porcelain tub, letting her rescuers know she was there.
“Another guy and I pulled her out of the tub,” Cliff said. “She was drained, and she could barely lift her head. It chokes me up thinking about it. She was skin and bones. Whatever energy she had was keeping her heart pumping. One more day, and she wouldn’t have made it.” As gently as he could, Cliff carried her down the stairs. Don’t drop her, he told himself. Don’t slip, or she won’t make it.
He didn’t wait until the end of the day for the van to return to the rescue center. Instead, Cliff took another vehicle from the caravan and rushed Schmoo back to Tylertown. He called ahead, and a veterinarian was waiting, ready to work on her. She was given fluids and immediate medical attention.
“I can still vividly see that scene of the rescuer carrying her to us,” said Dr. Paul Levitas, a volunteer veterinarian at the center who ended up fostering the dog and taking her to his clinic in Cincinnati. The clinic staff named her Schmoo. “All I could see was a silhouette created by the dust and lights from the van of someone carrying a lifeless dog to me. It reminded me of that terrible picture of the fireman carrying the dead child in Oklahoma City. I still get emotional thinking about Schmoo that night.”
Also at the M*A*S*H Unit at base camp when Schmoo arrived was volunteer Catherine “Cat” Gabrel. “They put some fluids under the dog’s skin, cleaned her up,” Cat said. “She never struggled. She knew we were helping her. By the next morning, she started lifting her head. We called her Bathtub.”
Three days after her rescue, Schmoo was driven to the Animal Hospital on Mount Lookout Square in Cincinnati, where she was slowly nursed back to health. “She was the worst we had seen,” Kim said. “But every day she would get better and better.” It took Schmoo a week and a half before she could stand on her own and another eight months before she was healthy and well socialized enough to be adopted. Schmoo’s owners, who did not return to their home, have not been located.
Karen Wheat, one of the veterinary technicians at the hospital who helped care for Schmoo, adopted her months later. Today, she is “fat and happy,” her caregiver says. Schmoo’s favorite spot at home is on the sofa. “She’s a very happy-go-lucky girl,” Karen’s friend Kim said about Schmoo, “and that tail is definitely always wagging.”
Although volunteers like Cliff Deutsch made strong connections with the pets they rescued, people who’d lost their pets longed to reconnect with them. Such was the case with six cats from the Speyrer household, who survived without their owners for five months. It’s another example of the bond household pets have with their humans. Even though no one was left in the neighborhood, the cats remained, waiting for their people to return.