Princess (Photos by Tom Taggett)

Dog is God Backwards

[Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans, July 29, 2008 ] When the levees broke after The Storm of August 2005, Richard Colar and Princess, his Siberian husky, were trapped in their attic on Desire Street for three days until some flotsam floated by and morphed into a makeshift raft.

"The water was twelve feet high and we waited on a rooftop until we were rescued. We had one day on dry land before I was evacuated to North Carolina, but they wouldn't let me take Princess. I had to leave my daughter with a neighbor."

A few days

later, the neighbor phoned that the authorities had also forced her to evacuate and an animal-rescue team took Princess away to parts unknown. After weeks of Internet searching, Richard found his way to the Humane Society of the US and connected with Cory Smith, the program manager for animal-sheltering issues.
"I know God sent Cory to me."

Corey and many other HSUS staffers located a depressed and stressed Princess at a shelter in Ohio. A flight home was not an option due to her critical condition, so Cory organized a caravan of volunteers to drive Princess to North Carolina.

Richard recalled, "The lady who was with her told me, that moments before I even entered the room, Princess got up on her legs for the first time and started looking around. The second I walked into the room Princess was already waiting for me! As soon as I sat down, she sat on top of me and curled up in my arms, like a baby."

Richard and Princess have been living in -but Princess stays mostly under- the FEMA trailer in the back yard of their home that is still uninhabitable.

"People we trusted, local people ripped us off," Richard and his mother both tell me.

The walls inside of the home on Desire Street are askew with gaps around the door frames caused by the pressure of the water surge that forced the home off its foundation. The contractors apparently did not own a plumb line and as I walked through the unfinished rooms, I felt as if I had entered a page in a Dr. Suess book.

Richard's mother, Georgianna Mitchell had gone to work the day The Storm hit and was unable to contact any family for seven weeks. "My boss put me up for three weeks until I was allowed to go back home. My sister was on the bridge for a whole week and she had just gotten out of the hospital diagnosed with lung cancer. My 82 year old aunt was in the Super Dome and half the things that went on there, you couldn't print; all the rapes, robberies and people dieing.

"The saddest part now is the way they dole out the money to the needy. We got a lot of thieving politicians and the government money hasn't all filtered to the people. I have been out of my house for three years now, but I am grateful to God that I have always been able to work and pay rent. The one good thing after The Storm is how the churches came together, and we all know, you just can't trust the government."

Mrs. Mitchell drove me to the infamous levee that broke and wrecked all the havoc. Where homes had once stood, only a few brick steps to nowhere and a few cornerstones of foundation are visible among the weeds. The only neighbors are skeletons of homes that didn't fall and a few that have been repaired, "Those are the homes of people who refused to leave," she tells me.

Only seven out of seventeen homes on Desire Street appear to be habited three years after The Storm. Mrs. Mitchell sighed then said, "Who knows where all those families are now?"

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July 29, 2008 By Eileen Fleming, Reporter and Editor http://www.wearewideawake.org/ Author Keep Hope Alive and Memoirs of a Nice Irish American Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory, Producer "30 Minutes With Vanunu." Permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media if this credit is attached and the title remains unchanged. Only in Solidarity do "we have it in our power to begin the world again."-Tom Paine