Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 20:43:05 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Gail Mackiernan Subject: Re: Earthquake In-Reply-To: <6CE8A160.41C6D301.0016BA20@aol.com> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit No, my dogs (and I) were oblivious to the quake. I lost faith in the "animals behaving weird before earthquakes" theory after my experience in the October 1989 Loma Prieta Quake (7.1). I was out in San Francisco delivering the introductory paper in a plenary session of a large scientific meeting. The talk itself was not the issue, only that it was so stressful to prepare for and deliver that I vowed to take the next day (a Tuesday) off and go birding, rejoining the meeting on Wednesday. Ah, the best laid plans...I went over the Bay bridge to Oakland, visited some wildlife refuges, then through the Caldecott Tunnel and then to Mt. Diablo. I birded there most of the day. I must admit feeling a bit unsettled all day, never really getting "into" my birding, but I ascribed that to the fact that no one was around and I felt a little nervous way out in the middle of nowhere by myself. Anyway, around 4:30 I started off the mountain, and if anyone has been there you know the road down is very winding and narrow. Anyway, about 4:50 I reached the bottom of the road, where there was a little horse farm raising Arabians. There were several mares with tiny foals near the fence and I pulled over to admire them. The mares were munching happily, the foals frolicking and nursing. No nervousness or pacing, just complete contentment. At 5:00 pm I pulled over at a 7-11 for a Coke. At 5:04 the earthquake hit. It was quite something! The ground literally rolled in waves from south to north, dust rose along the wave crests, trees swept back and forth, their tops whipping together and apart, the cars in the lot crashed together. I held on to a metal pole and my Coke for the 20-30 seconds and then it was over. It took me two days to get back to S.F. and our meeting was cancelled so I spent the next week birding. had a pretty good time too, except for all the aftershocks. When I got back to the University all my biologist friends said, "oh, how awful, how terrifying!" and all my geologist friends said, "oh you were so lucky to have had such an experience!" But I would not rely on animals to warn me -- at least not California horses! Gail Mackiernan Silver Spring, MD on 12/09/2003 6:01 PM, Steve Huy at Gabboon@AOL.COM wrote: > I have heard stories of animals behaving strangely before a quake. > Did anyone notice anything among the birds? > > ====================================================================== > = > To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com > with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey > ======================================================================= > ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================