Remedial Survival Skills, 101: How To Survive An Earthquake When All You Really Want To Do Is Continue Shopping

Having grown up in Northern California, I’m no stranger to emergency preparedness, it’s just that having lived away from Northern California for so many years, I’m not very good at it. Well do I remember the earthquake drills in kindergarten, when we’d all dive beneath our desks to ‘duck and cover’, which come to think of it was a waste of time because those desks weren’t bolted to the floor so the more likely result had a tremor of any force hit would have been thirty or so five year olds pretty badly run over by heavy metal desks. Still, should the need arise to dive under a desk, I’m pretty sure I still could. I may not to this day know what the proper tire inflation is for my car, but I do know it’s a darned good idea to have a radio with batteries somewhere in your house at all times. Likewise with candles, waterproof matches, and some semblance of a seventy-two hour kit (My own 72 hour kit is woefully inadequate at the present time as it consists merely of a butane lighter, a pocket sized package of Kleenex, a tube of lipstick, three granola bars, an expired mascara and last month’s issue of Cosmo. I really need to do something about that). Finally, I doubt there’s been a single minute in my life that I didn’t know without having to think about it that should I ever feel the earth shake, I’d immediately stop what I was doing and go stand in a doorway.

I did very well with that at 4:45a.m. yesterday, all except for the ‘immediately’ part, mainly because what I was doing when my bed started to shake was sleeping incredibly well and having a wonderful dream that had something to do with a miscalculation on a bonus check that worked out incredibly in my favor and coincided neatly with a fabulous 75% off sale in the Petite Suit department of Macy’s. Much as I was enjoying loading an extremely large clothing rack, the increased shaking of the bed nudged awake some basic Native Californian survival instinct, and I woke up.

The sky, as much as I could see of it without benefit of contacts or eyeglasses (not much), was suitably gray, ominous, and what the heck, probably (from what I could remember from all those film strips in science class) indicative of ‘earthquake weather’. The shaking continued, and I was just about to bolt for the doorway when I realized it couldn’t be an earthquake. It couldn’t be, because both cats were sleeping soundly, undisturbed, in the midst of all of it. No animal will sleep through an earthquake. They’ll generally run and hide well before it even gets started.

There had to be another explanation, and I quickly uncovered it from beneath an extra blanket at the foot of the bed. It was Basil. Shaking uncontrollably. I immediately checked her nose and it was cold, a universal sign that told me (much faster and more infallibly than any $80 vet visit) that she wasn’t sick. Which could only mean….

The thunder and lightning weren’t two minutes behind my realization, and it was then that I realized it was no earthquake I had to survive, just another heart rending case of my best friend’s biggest fears: Thunder. Lightning. They have always set her off in shaking fits that are impossible to quell, no matter I did then what I have always done, the only thing I can think of doing, which really does tend to make her feel better. I wrapped her in the blanket, pulled her onto my lap, and hugged her until the storm passed, or at least the louder parts of it, which turned out to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 6:30a.m.

Which is fine, and it did give me a jump start to the day.

I suppose, if the weather forecast is any indication, I’ve got a lot of this to look forward to. There’s no real cure for it, unless you want to tranquilize your pet (I don’t, although I once allowed Gerdie, who’s long since gone to dog heaven, to have ½ of a light beer pre-fireworks in Colorado, when the local demonstration was set up in what appeared to be the very edge of our front lawn. She happily went to sleep before the first firecracker was lit). There are two ‘suggested remedies’ if you believe Ask The Country Vet in Country Living Magazine, and I’m not big on either of them.

The first, he said, is to play, on a daily basis, recorded storm sounds for your dog.
Gradually increase the volume until your dog becomes acclimated to these sounds and they no longer bother them. This to me sounds like cruel and unwarranted punishment. If she’s going to shake herself almost sick during an actual storm, why in the world would I want to play recorded storm sounds all day when I’m gone? That’s like saying, to train your dog not to chase cars, simply tie them down in the driveway and back over them once or twice until they get the message.

The second sounded more feasible, albeit not at 4:45 in the morning. Engage your dog, the vet writes, during these storms, in her favorite playtime activities. Reward with treats, and eventually she will associate storms with good times.
Somehow the idea of tossing stuffed animals around my place as she barked in excitement, her feet making a wonderful racket on the floor, didn’t seem like anything that would win me high marks at the next HOA meeting.

Never, under any circumstances, the vet writes, should you hold, coddle, console or otherwise be anything other than business as usual with your pet during a storm. This will only reinforce their fear. Disregard them, and act as if everything is normal.

That last darned near cost Country Living a subscriber, and convinced me The Country Vet had never shared space of any kind with a dog, and certainly not one of my Basil’s caliber. I’ll ignore her when she’s hurting when the day ever comes that she doesn’t immediately intuit when I am, and stops either crawling outright into my lap or at a minimum not letting me get too far out of her reach. The very idea is heartless.

So I will continue to coddle, console, and comfort.

At least until I can teach her how to brace herself in a doorway until the storm passes.