Thelma Dalmas returns after blaze

I’ve been writing a weekly column for this newspaper for just over 30 years (my first appeared in March of 1981), and until recently I’d only missed my deadline twice. In 1987, my husband and I were in an automobile accident, I broke my arms and legs, and although I remained in the hospital for a month, I only missed one week. Eleven years later (1998), my flight was stranded in Dakar, Senegal and, since this was before the days of widespread Internet access, I missed again. So, you may have been wondering about my absence for the past two weeks.

On the night of May 24, as John and I were getting ready for bed, I said, “Do you smell smoke?” We walked into the kitchen (in my mind, this is always the room that you associate with something on fire) and within less than a minute, our entire house was full of hot, black smoke. We could neither see nor breathe and fled out to the porch. Having no reading glasses, we also couldn’t see to use the cell phone. John ran to our nearest neighbor, about 300 yards away, to call 911 and I crawled back into the house to find our little Pomeranian.

Yes, I know that you are not supposed to go back into a burning building, but when an emergency strikes, sometimes people just don’t follow all the rules. At any rate, I managed to find her, and by the time the fire department arrived, the three of us were standing outside.  As it turns out, the fire had started in an electrical outlet downstairs and destroyed the lower part of our house. The upstairs had been ruined by soot damage and it will probably be autumn before we are able to return.

The week following the fire was simply awful. All of my books were lost, our computers had partially burned, and most of our possessions were in ashes. We had no clothes to speak of (we had actually left the scene of the fire wearing some of our neighbor’s borrowed pajamas since our things were covered in soot). We were just completely disoriented.

However, in the midst of all our troubles we have been fortunate to have had so much help. Our insurance representative has been great and the restoration company that has been directing the cleanup has gone far beyond what might be expected.

A few days after the fire, when the weather got so hot and we had no water, I was becoming really upset because all of my flowers were going to die. Now, I know that it is silly to have a fit about a bunch of petunias when nearly everything around you is in ruins, but it was the only beautiful thing that I had left and I was going to have to watch those plants wither and die, day by day. That evening the restoration company delivered a 125- gallon tank of water to our house so that I could keep my flowers alive and that meant so much to me.

The owner of the small motel where John and I first stayed would often bring the two of us a plate of cold watermelon when she saw us, hot and dirty, return from a day at the ruins of our house. We found a computer shop that managed not only to save the data on our hard drives, but held our hands as we tried to learn how to use all the technology of our new laptop.  A friend kindly offered us the use of her summer home at Leesville Lake, a place where we can really begin to restore our spirit.

We return to the house often so that I can feed the birds and care for my garden. Other times I sit up here by the lake and watch brown-headed nuthatches feeding young or listen to the summer tanagers sing. Earlier this afternoon, I saw a mama turkey and eight downy babies scurry across the road and tonight we heard the mellow whistle of a whip-poor-will. We may have lost many of our prized possessions, but we still have so much and for that I am thankful.

News and Notes

The biggest birding news of the past few weeks was the sighting of a scissor-tailed flycatcher on May 23. Mark Johnson found the bird along Red House Road in Campbell County and called some other members of the Bird Club. Two of us arrived within the hour and we all got great looks at this western species. The bird was also found at the same spot the next day.