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06 September, 2007

Evacuate, Evacuate!

Just when we thought things were back to normal...

I was down at the property taking pictures of the guys working on the septic system when my phone rang. It was Dianna. Her voice sounded just a little excited. She said "there are some people here from the Department of Health and they want to spray for malaria and that we had to get the cats and ourselves out of the house for at least a half hour, and could I come home right away?" - pretty much all in one breath.

Of course, I jumped in the Isuzu and zoomed home. As I jumped from the vehicle, Dianna met me and explained what was going on as two men, one carrying an official-looking clipboard with papers on it, and the other carrying what looked like an Imperial Star Ship Mega-Blaster Death Ray Gun, came up and proceeded to introduce themselves.

Still not sure what was going on, I asked them if they had any identification. I thought that would either bring out the ID cards or cause them to hem and haw and stutter a bit, if they weren't legit. All it did was elicit "Well, not today." from Mr. Clipboard, like, why would anyone carry ID out in the field?

Going with the flow, I asked him what it was they wanted to do. Mr. Clipboard, "Clippy", said they were going house to house to spray for mosquitos as part of a malaria prevention action following the hurricane, and that we would need to keep our cats and us out of the house for about a half hour after the spraying was done.

Realizing these guys were either legit or that I was about to be blasted into the next star cluster, I told them to wait a minute while I went to Tony's meat shop, where we have all our stuff stored, to retrieve the cat carriers. They said "Sure, no problem."

After getting the carriers out of the shop, we completely pissed off Miss Blue and Mr. Midas, by putting them in the carriers and then putting them in the Isuzu. I started the engine and fired up the A/C to give them at least thermal comfort.

Once we cleared the house, The one with the Mega-Blaster fired it up (noisy thing, too) and proceeded to take about 15-20 seconds in the meat shop, the house, and the laundry shed, to completely fog things up. Then they thanked us, shook our hands, and walked on down the driveway to their next victims.

For the whole half hour that we waited along with Edna, who had come to do her Wednesday cleaning and Cody, who came to get some water for his house (He takes 5-gallons of water, several times a week, for drinking water at his house), fog continued to waft out of the closed hurricane shutters all around our house.

At the end of the alloted time, we went in, holding our breath as much as possible, to open all the shutters, and turn on all the fans.

Even at the end of the day, we could still smell some remnants of the spray. So, I hope we're relatively safe now from the malaria-carrying 'squitos.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Poor Blue! Oh...and you and Dianna, too. (smile)

Better to be "fogged" than feverish, eh?

But it sure seems like it doesn't rain, but it pours down there!

Hope the weekend is better!

Deane - and the JLARC Crew (Olympia)