Practice makes perfect

We had another tornado drill today, and I'm happy to report that practice does make perfect. Almost.

Dempsey and his visiting sister were running around, as usual, when I heard the tornado siren go off. Like last time, the puppies were completely oblivious. At first I thought it was a drill, since the siren went off on trash day in the early afternoon. But then it occurred to me that it wasn't the first Wednesday of the month, so I turned on the TV. Somebody was calling from her car to tell the reporter she had seen a funnel cloud from I-35W, near where the bridge collapsed.

Eek! That's only a couple of miles from our house! I had to get the kids to the basement.

My big innovation this time was ignoring the maxim "walk, do not run." Instead, I just lobbed a tennis ball down the stairs to the basement. The puppies immediately took off after it. Next, I picked up two leashes, the cat, and the squeaky squirrel. I walked calmly downstairs, put the cat in the crate, and tied the leashes to some posts. Then I squeaked the squirrel.

The puppies immediately stopped wrestling over the tennis ball, and skipped over to me. While they were politely sitting, waiting for me to give them the squirrel, I snapped on the leashes. Voila! Easy.

We're still not quite perfect, however. A few minutes later, the power went out, and we were in the dark, literally. We were also in the dark, figuratively, since we had now lost cable TV and WiFi. I couldn't hear the tornao siren, but I didn't know if that was because the power was out or if the warning was over. I tried calling someone on my cell phone, but that was out, too.

I suppose I should replace the beer in the emergency kit with a tiny blue transistor radio. That's what the pioneers had, right?

P.S. I have some pics and videos of puppies playing, which I'll post as soon as I can stop this @#$% WiFi from dropping me halfway through. Stay tuned!