Shari’s Gone Country

With the forecast of thunderstorms, I figured I’d feed the sheep a little early. Good thing I did as there was thunder/lightening all to the east of us.

While I was watering the sheep, I spotted a plume of smoke to the east… just over the mountain ridge and near Antelope Springs road… the other end from where we live. I immediately stopped watering and hurried to have Bev call it in.

Would you believe, the dispatcher actually asked us if we were seeing smoke from the Iron County Dump?

Pardon me, we’re under extreme fire watch… there’s lightening all around… we NEVER see smoke from the Iron County Dump… this smoke is rising to about 15K feet…

Surprise! Surprise! Look at what I saw to the south… of course we hadn’t turned on the evening news yet. This fire took down power poles, and caused a county-wide outage in Washington County, starting about 15 miles south of us. The fire was in Dammeron Valley, about 35 miles or so south of us.

Now, our main concern was this little fire burning just east of us… Even the animals were paying attention.
When I went out to coop up the chickens, we were in the middle of what could best be termed a “pre-fire storm”… the wind was howling from the east at well over 40 mph… dust blowing HARD. And then there was the thunder, lightening, and reduced visibility from the smoke.

We took ALL the bird feeders down, the wind chimes… they weren’t singing a happy song, and made sure things were stowed safe and sound. Heck, we even discussed hose placement in case we had to defend our little patch of tumbleweed.

You should have seen our dogs… at one point Mindy, the big black Lab was on the couch to my left. Sarah, my Finnish Spitz was on the couch to the right… and the other three big dogs… Koda, Coco, and Kiki were at my feet. They were SO undone!

Sure the weather was bothering them… outside trips were short and too the point.

But what they really wanted was the potato chips I had… of course, I felt sorry for them, and gave in.

That wasn’t the end… the lightening continued until sometime around midnight.

Sarah snuggled as close as she could to me in my bed.

Cindy reported being unable to move in any direction in her bed… she had the other four on either side of her most of the night… including Mindy, who finds it a real challenge to haul her fat butt onto anyone’s bed.

This morning we awoke to an acrid smell of “old smoke”, but nothing visible all around us… and tonight, we’ll get a repeat of last night.