New filly born during the "Inland Hurricane"

Look what we found today! My magic trick of making mares foal by leaving them out in the rain was not by design this time--but all the same, Snap had a baby girl.
Barry found her this afternoon, when he went to feed. She is a little bitty sumpin, but all of Snap's babies are. She is a little contracted on her back legs, so she did not get to go out and play--she came out only for a few photos, then back in the stall she went to let her tendons relax. Those tight tendons are what make her so butt-high. Normally the tendons will relax on their own, but sometimes they require some interference, in the form of wrapping the legs so that they do not use the tendons at all and they can relax so that they stand normally. If baby girl is not relaxed by tomorrow evening, she will get her little self wrapped up for a few days.
Snap is a little ribby looking in this picture--sometimes that is the case for a day or two after a mare foals. It is kind of like their ribs are sprung. Within a day or two of delivery, they get back to normal--especially if they are young like Snap is.
Tomorrow, maybe I can get some cuter pics of her. I just did not want to leave her out too long, using those legs and strengthening her already too tight tendons. We are trying to think of a name that references the big storm, but she is such a girly girl, many we have thought of just do not fit.

It is a bit of an exaggeration to say she was born during the storm. Probably she was born several hours after it, during the nite. But I do not know exactly when. The storm was mid-day yesterday, and the worst part of it was a little to the south of us. We had only 45 mph winds, and appear to have suffered little to no damage. We got lucky again--then again, we have already lost so darn many good trees that we do not have that much left to lose! Everyone is safe though and that is all that matters.

Just south of us though, they had winds of 106 mph, and inches and inches of rain, as well as at least one tornado, and likely more. The interstate was closed for 40 miles, because there was too much debris on the roads, and even semi-trucks were tipped over from the wind. There is still no power and in many places no water, and power lines are down all over.

We took a look around today to see how bad it really was. Even the constant reporting on the radio--which has been 24 hours of talk and info instead of regular programming, on all the stations that can still broadcast--did not prepare us for how much damage there was.

This was in Herrin. Right smack in the middle of downtown, the traffic light was ripped right out of the ground.
This was a typical scene all over--trees down, laying on power lines.
I tried to get pictures of huge old trees ripped right out of the ground. I was amazed at how many places had already cleaned up their yards. Heck, we still are not completely done with our damage from the big storm we had, and that was in 2006 or 2007! But what else are they going to do? Not watch TV, that is for sure.
This is outside Herrin too--I drive past this Barn all the time on the way to Dr M's (whose clinic is amazingly unscathed--we could not reach him to make sure they were ok, so we just went to see for ourselves). This barn looks like it had its legs swept out from under it.

This is just north of Marion, where the damage was the greatest. Some of these trees were massive. I saw on the news that the reason so many huge trees came straight out of the ground was because we were so waterlogged already.
This building had the windows blown right out of it.

It may be a week to ten days before everyone has their power back on. Much of this area is so rural that it is labor intensive to repair everything. It was also graduation at SIU, so there were many extra people in town--with nowhere to eat, nowhere to stay and many roads closed so that they could not get out. What a mess.

Everyone is being so nice though, if the calls into the radio station are indicative. One woman with a grooming business offered to house people's pets for free while fence repairs, etc were made. Several organizations were planning to feed the masses over the next few days. Any time a new shipment of ice, or generators, or gas trucks arrived at a store, it would be announced. Restaurants that were operating by generator would be announced, along with updates on how long the wait to be seated was. I never thought of this, but ATMs are not working, so whether a restaurant was taking debit or credit cards (since they have no phone lines) was announced as well. It is remarkable.

There were some funny things though. One woman had Barry in stitches hollering about having now Par. Which I gather is Power in hillbilly talk. Another person called complaining about the town curfews--asking the radio announcer whether he believed in the constitution. The announcer told him he did not have time for that foolishness and quit bothering him, and hung up on him. There were a lot of great calls like that, which made listening for hours as we drove around pretty interesting.

So far there has only been one death reported, and most of the hospital reports involve chain saw injuries. That sounds like this house--get through what they are calling an "inland hurricane" only to chop off a foot or something.

In other news, Barry has no idea if he is supposed to go to work on Monday. As of last night, the contract was not signed, so it appears that he is really out of a job. Oh well, he has some ideas, so he will get to work on finding another one. Until then I know I can keep him busy fixing things around here.

Diablo still has not foaled despite being on day 3 of moderate waxing. She went out to a pen for about 6 hours today to shake off the dust, and I am honestly surprised that did not do it. Maybe tonight.