Orphans of the Storm: a True Story by Karla Stover

A Hood Canal Mystery based on the memoirs of a San Francisco Madame
Orphans of the Storm

Wind out of the south, whitecaps washing over the floating bridges, the ferry system shut down—a Pacific Northwest storm.  And one post-storm, spring morning while driving to work, I heard that the previous night’s gully washer caused another problem:  squirrel’s nests knocked out of trees leaving a surfeit of orphaned babies.  An animal welfare organization put out a call for foster parents.

Wow!  That sounds like fun, I thought.  I can do that.  I love squirrels.  When I hit the first stop light I wrote down their phone number.

At work, I found a place where a box of the family Sciuridae could sleep while I worked, and where I could retreat to give them little bottles of food and some TLC.  Then I called the rescue group.

“I heard about your need for squirrel baby foster parents,” I said, “and I’m really interested.”

“Well now, isn’t that nice," a lady said, "but before adoption can be considered, I have a few questions.”

“Sure.”

“Your name?”

“Karla Stover.”

“Where do you live?”

“Tacoma.”

“Oh well, now, that’s a bit of a problem.”

“How so?”

“Well, the babies were orphaned in Seattle.”

“I can drive there to pick some up.”

“And there are their physicals.”

Say what?

“Well, who administers the physicals?”

“A vet.”

“We have lots of vets in Tacoma, and running water and everything.  My husband and I have gone to the same vet for years.”

Levity wasn’t her strong suit.

“Yes, but it has to be a wild animal vet.”

I sensed roadblocks—possibly the result of animosity and disdain Seattle feels for Tacoma.

“Well, I’ll ask our vet if he can give them their physicals,” I said.

“No can do, I’m afraid.  We already have an approved wildlife vet ready to take them on.”

“Maybe I can drive to your vet, then.  Where's the office?”

“Lynnwood.”

Lynnwood!  That’s a hundred miles away. Up North. Driving through Seattle's horrible traffic.

Still, I persevered.  “I could do that.”

“Every week?”

“What?”

“Every week. The orphaned babies have to be checked and weighed weekly.  We want to make sure they’re getting the best possible care.”

“Will they be vaccinated for hanta virus and Lyme’s disease?” I asked.  “Do they need Frontline?”

Perhaps sensing my sarcasm she said, “I’m sorry, but we have strict rules and regulations about who qualifies to adopt our orphans and how they are to be raised.”

“They’re rodents, for gosh sake.”

“You see, that statement shows a flippant attitude.  I’m sorry but you don’t qualify.”

Jeez! Take it down a notch, lady, I thought as she hung up on me.

About a week later, I heard a knock on the front door.  It was two little kids with three squirrel babies in a box.  “Here,” one boy said, “Mom said we should give them to you.”

I didn’t know who the kids were, who their mom was, or why she thought I should have the care and responsibility of three hostile-looking rodents.  Their unattractiveness knocked the romance of the idea right out of the ring. Nevertheless, I took  the box and carried it to the garage.  Then I attempted to put dishes of water and sunflower seeds—shelled, I might add—in the box.  Nasty little buggers.  Their only interest was in trying to bite the hand that was attempting to feed them. 

After a few days, when it didn’t look like they were eating, I decided to turn them loose among the apple, cherry, pear, and filbert nut trees in our backyard.  They scampered for safety.

  Ever since, we’ve had squirrel families eating the filberts, biting holes into the fruit and, digging up my bulbs.

And all without physicals or mailed reminders for booster shots.

A Tacoma Washington murder with trips to Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula
 a Gothic novel in the good old tradition

Color my world conflicted

Get it here!

https://books2read.com/Dreamcatcher-Barbara-Baldwin

                If you’re like me, you’re tired of hearing about the Covid virus, quarantine and food shortages. You’re ready to get out – ANYWHERE – just to feel like your life is your own again. On May 3, Diane Bator wrote on the BWL blog about some of the trouble some writers are having staying on track. It seems ridiculous that with all the hours in a day we can’t sit down and crank out novel after novel.  While I should be writing, my creative efforts have shifted. Instead of the computer, I have been sitting at the sewing machine finishing some quilt tops that had been started, or purchased, some time ago. As I cut and sew, it is impossible to miss my use of color. No pale or pastel colors for this quilter and that made me think more about the use of color in writing (and life).

Remember when you got that first box of crayons for Kindergarten? Big chunky colors – red, blue, green, yellow, black, brown, purple and orange. As we colored, we’d pick yellow for the sun and green for the grass because colors often cause us to think of particular physical things.  As our pictures progressed through the years, we probably added some orange to the sun; red if there was a sunset, and the grass had patches of brown or blue-green and colorful little flowers began sprouting everywhere.   

Color has also often been used in song titles. Though using particular titles may be dating me, do you recognize “A Yellow Submarine”, “Blue Suede Shoes”, or “Purple Rain”?

But colors can also make us think of non-nouns; in other words things like emotions. Red might communicate anger or heat; whereas pink, which is a shade of red, is a more gentle color; perhaps like lavender. Green is often the color of envy or jealousy; yellow might make one think of a cowardly person. There are plenty of idioms that use color – “the pot calling the kettle black”, “blue in the face” or “white knuckled.” Yet no one color is exclusive to a particular arena. For example, red can be both “red tape” and the “red carpet” and those two expressions can be opposites rather than synonyms.

                I urge you to try a writing exercise using color to describe something not normally associated with color? What color is rain or the blowing wind? How would you paint hunger or homelessness or grief? How would you describe a rushing river with color?

                My writing is similar to my quilting – full of color and no two are alike. I write contemporary and historical, time travel and short story. I invite you to visit http://www.bookswelove.com/romance-authors/baldwin-barbara/ for a full listing of my novels with Books We Love.

Here’s to our early release…or at least to the opening of the local liquor stores!

Barb

http://www.authorsden.com/barbarajbaldwin

http://www.bookswelove.com/romance-authors/baldwin-barbara/

Natural Disaster by J. S. Marlo

J. S. Marlo's BWL Books

This week has been tough (I'm writing this post on May 2, 2020). It brought back lots of heartbreaking memories.

This weekend is the anniversary of the 2016 wildfire that  devastated Fort McMurray, destroying entire neighborhoods, and forcing the evacuation of more than 80,000 people  in just a few hours. The fire was so intense, it created its own weather system, producing fierce winds and smoke clouds that generated lightning. It cost the life of one person, a young woman who died in a traffic accident as she drove out of town through a curtain of fire. Though the death toll could have been way higher, her death was still one too many.

I flew out on the last plane of the evening before the full evacuation was ordered. It was a fluke as my granddaughter was sick and my daughter needed help. I didn't know I was on the last plane or that the airport would close its commercial flights after we departed.

From the air, I could see the wild fire and the raging flames burning the forest. The fire was later nicknamed The Beast. It looked like a giant open mouth ready to engulf the entire town. At that moment, I was certain I would never come back home. The firefighters had to bulldozer rows of houses in order to create a firebreak. In the end, the fire surrounded the town and many neighborhoods were lost, but they saved the hospital (in blue where the arrow points in flood picture), the water treatment plant, and the other essential buildings, and the town survived. The air quality, which usually runs on a scale of 1 to 10, as 10 being extremely dangerous for your health, was above 40.

The fire started on May 1, 2016, burned out of control until July 5, 2016, and was fully extinguished more than a year later on August 2, 2017. It destroyed 1,456,810 acres of land (roughly 5 times the size of Los Angeles). It took years to rebuild, but we can still see vacant lots where homeowners or businesses just left town without rebuilding. The Covid-19 pandemic was just another bump into our recovery. Many stores closed, but essential services were still open, and there was no shortage of anything (except toilet paper for the first week...which I still don't understand.). People were awesome at social distance and we had  less than twenty cases in the last two months. Then this week happened...

The river broke when it was still cold outside and it created an ice jam of 25 km (15 miles).

On the fourth anniversary of the wildfire of the century, and during the pandemic of the century, we're in the middle of the flood of the century.

The river didn't just overflow, it flowed backward, which was something the elders had never seen, submerging neighborhoods that had never seen any flood water since their creation a century ago. Some of the neighborhoods under water were the same ones that were destroyed by the fire. Some people lost their houses again, houses they'd just finished rebuilding, More than 13,000 people had to be evacuated and re-lodged wherever they could in town. Social distancing went down the river. Water turned brownish and we're under a boiling water advisory that won't be lifted until September 2020.  And most of the stores that were still open went under water.

Amid all this, my family is among the lucky ones. My home survived the fire and the flood, and my husband didn't lose his job. The ice jam broke yesterday and the water receded. Again we lost one person, one too many. Today the destruction will be assessed and the cleaning will start. As a community, we will survive, but it will be another big scar over the huge one that had just barely begun to heal.

It's scary how destructive nature can be, but it's also amazing how resilient people can be, and how such tragedies can bring out the best in all of us.

Stay safe. Many hugs!
JS

 

J. S. Marlo's Website