All of Seal Harbor is without phone and electricity on this Monday morning. As a result we are closing The Naturalist's Notebook for the second straight day. Hurricane Irene became Tropical Storm Irene before it reached our section of the Maine coast, but it has left a good portion of the state without power. At our house we lost a few shingles, and we have some branches to pick up, but otherwise we went unscathed.
I tried to capture the force of yesterday's wind in still photos. The sound—the roar—was as impressive as the sight.
Our day will be memorable not only for the storm but also for a scary morning with our dog, Wooster, and a memorable dinner with our five campground refugees. When we awoke, Wooster, who had slept with us, had blood all over her hind end. Our white comforter looked like evidence from a murder scene. Amazingly, we were able to find a veterinarian who would see us on a hurricane-blown Sunday, and he determined that an anal gland had ruptured. I won't spoil your breakfast with any further details, but the canine patient is back at home, recovering.
We knew the storm was easing when some wild turkey moms brought their chicks out to feed on our lawn.
For dinner, one of our guests, who grew up in Moldova, cooked us a Moldovan dish made of homemade polenta, fish (salmon in our case), crushed-garlic sauce (fantastic!) and feta cheese, all eaten together. We learned about the food and culture of Moldova, a small republic, once part of the Soviet Union, that sits between Romania and Ukraine. As the wind continued to howl, and Wooster lay curled up on a still-bloody quilt, we stayed up late into the evening talking about the strange twists of circumstance that bring people together and make days memorable.