Fires sweep Los Angeles. We lose 24,000 acres of greenery. We lose one house. We lose no people. But we forget about the animals. Imagine how many of them we lost.
My friend tells me a story, relayed to her by her father, who lives in Chatsworth. He’s watching the fire from his house. He can see it very clearly, as it’s quite close–just up the hillside, in fact. Animals are fleeing the flames, running down the hill to escape them. Among the animals, he can see rabbits. They tear down the slope. Some of them are actually ablaze, and like living embers, they touch off fires further down the slope.
Okay, so that’s a horrifying image. But it helps remind me that fires aren’t just about evacuations and property damage.
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…and next time I promise to tell a funny story about a hairpin turn and a truckload of kumquats.
