Should I stay or should I go now,
If I go there will be trouble,
If I stay there will be double,
So come on and let me know…
That is the theme song of the coastal Floridian experience from August through November. At some point in this time frame we Floridians turn into ants that have just had part of their peninsular ant hill stepped on. Especially if the southern tip catches the scent of a strong wind, three million ants come scurrying out, making a run for northern ground.
We Floridian ants are simple creatures. We come in two extreme varieties of scurrying. The first is:
The Doomsday-er
I spotted them this afternoon when I ventured out of the house. At first I didn’t recognize them. I said to myself Why is the traffic so heavy? What is going on? And then I remembered. Dorian is on his way was practically floating on the still very calm wind because so many people were speaking it in every direction. Life suddenly is at a standstill. Gossip dies down, all except the gossip related to which grocery store still has bottles of water. In another two days it will be which gas stations still have fuel.
I am guessing that somewhere out there a conspiracy theorist is squinting his eyes suspiciously at all the ants running about the parking lots. Aha he says, These storms are all manufactured in the name of big business. In fact I would probably believe it if hurricanes hadn’t been occurring on this coast for the last…well…forever. Black Friday does not need to be a thing in Florida. Hurricane Friday is a thing.
For some reason when the doomsday-ers panic and buy up all of the grocery store, they focus mainly on the water. Mind you there is nothing wrong with getting some jugs, but the fact that you can actually fill up jugs with your own tap water does not ever occur to them. Even more strange to me, they focus on the individual water bottles—the ones that come in 24 packs. I see people cruising out of the grocery store with shopping carts loaded down with ten cases of water bottles.
I have this vision that the doomsday-ers don’t actually think they can use a cup during hurricanes, only disposable individual bottles. There they will be sitting by the TV very near the kitchen cabinet full of cups. They will be waiting for the power to go out, and next to them is a growing pile of discarded bottles. We cannot move from this spot and miss any of the hurricane coverage even long enough to refill a cup from the water jug, despite the fact that a lot of this single use plastic I am consuming will not actually get recycled, and just might end up floating around in the ocean. Take that Dorian!
As stated above, there is another type of Floridian ant, which is:
Over Confident Man
This man (or woman) is not out buying tons of supplies. He or she probably already has the basic necessities, and likely they have been sitting in the garage since last year. He doesn’t have time to be at the store anyway, because he needs to spend about eight hours a day on Facebook talking about the hurricane.
The bulk of this talking goes along the lines of This ain’t a hurricane! I survived Hurricane Andrew! Mandatory Evacuation? Ha! Nobody tells me when it is unsafe to be on my property!
There is generally a great deal of what he feels is a public service announcement, wherein he shouts out Wind doesn’t kill people! It is the surge! This may or may not be entirely true, but trying to convert a doomsday-er into being over confident is like trying to get a penguin to agree to move to the North Pole.
That’s like a fire ant inviting a sugar ant to come into its nest. I don’t actually know that much about ants, but I’m pretty sure a local fire ant is something like the ant version of a fire breathing dragon. The tiny sugar ant is like a timid little knight-in-training that forgot half of its armor. They don’t even speak the same language, and the fight isn’t exactly clean. I definitely got off course with this analogy, but I have never before humanized ants to this extent and it is kind of fun. Hurricanes bring out all kinds of strange things within us…
And Here I Am Just Sitting In My Ant Hill
As it turns out, there is a third type of Floridian ant. It is the hybrid. A hybrid thinks it is probably all going to be okay, it’s just going to really suck. There is the allure of family eighty miles inland calling to me. There is the allure of staying home standing guard over all that is here like some sort of unnecessary sentinel.
Should I stay or should I go…
I think the estimated size of Dorian's biceps may decide for me on Saturday afternoon.
reminds me of that episode of King of the Hill when it snows in Texas..
thanks for sharing.. funny stuff...
Ha! Snow might be even worse here. Now that's a scary thought :)
Those empty water bottles would make a good raft, when combined with rope and some knot know how.
But the emergency management resource checklist did not include instructions on tying knots! Or the necessity of rope! Oh dear.
No rope? Oh well, nice knowing you Ginny. :)
Maybe some will come blowing by me. I have all this long hair too, if push comes to shove...
Rapunzel-style huh?
I don't have quite that much. What I have will just have to do ;)
Hope your hurricane ended up ok...You still with us?
Hold on tight!!!
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Thank you. I will definitely be white knuckling it if I decide to stay.
While the hurricane danger is very real, this was an absolutely hilarious post! The water thing cracks me up too. Every time we're about to get a major snowstorm, our parking lots look the same. I am also a hybrid ant. Please be safe, and be sure to let everyone know you're ok once it passes. I don't think I have the internal grit to deal with a whole season of hurricanes. The occasional wind storm is enough for me.
It is such a beautiful day out right now. It makes me think back to a hundred+ years ago when people had no warning. It is hard to imagine a category 4 slamming into us right now.
I guess people act the same no matter the type of disaster :)
G, that hurricane its on drugs! It came here, stayed next to the island and not even a drop of water or winds! Be safe! That crazy thing is trolling people!
This comment really made me lol. It is trolling a lot of people right now.
Different places, different concerns. We wonder how you can live with hurricanes and you wonder how we live without freezing to death in winter. I guess it's what you're used to. I can only relate thinking of our 2018 tornado and my box of meat. I hope you are all okay.
Yep, we all have something crazy. But isn't it wonderful that neither of us have to deal with volcanic erruptions. This could be so much worse :)
Very true! Have you ever experienced an earthquake?
No, but that sounds pretty bad. The no warning stuff takes it to the next level.
We only get small ones here and rarely. I don't know how they handle big ones.
But it's true, the surge is more dangerous than the wind!
Haha I must be a hybrid ant too. Though the doomsday ants really pissed me off two years ago when they sucked up all the gas in the state three days ahead of Hurricane Irma. Who promptly changed course to head straight for my house. If we had been ordered to evacuate at that point, we wouldn't have got very far due to a million people who decided to get out when it was totally unnecessary to do so. Now I'm annoyed that the hype is already starting again, cause I need groceries and I suppose the doomsday swarms will be cleaning out the stores.
I have doubts that the people buying flats of 12oz water bottles are really from Florida. If there's one thing a Floridian ought to know, it's how to prepare for a hurricane.
Good luck, from the Gulf Coast
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Ha! Yea I largely agree with Over Confident Man. Rising water is undeniably the most dangerous. Where I live the Hurricane Matthew tide sliced the houses by the water in half. Such a bizarre sight to see. What I find annoying about Over Confident Man is that he acts like the wind of a cat 3 or 4 is no big deal. Wind that can rip off parts of your house or throw a tree on it is a big deal in my book :)
Oh yea, the gas is already gone here in North Florida and it is scheduled to hit in the south as of now. I think a lot of people are hoarding gas for generators. People testing them in my area make a hum in the distant air like a bunch of mechanical cicadas.
Good point, those water bottles are probably the northerners. I have looked at facebook off and on since the announcement of the storm since there is a lot of good local info on there. There are so many first-timer northerners freaking out.
Good luck to you too. Hopefully it will skip you and if it gets to me it will be a toddler instead of the body-builder at present.
It's not easy being the Ant Queen of a hill sometimes, having to make all those decisions. :)
Stay but buy a boat? My Sis-In-Law's sister's family lives in Houston. Two of yer early teenish sons went together and bought a canoe. After their neighborhood flooded, they paddled around checking on their neighbors and taking them things. It's all fun and games when you are on the child side of things.
Take care ! Stay safe !
I heard about people doing that. Defintely the fun way of dealing with flooding. We will not have that much flooding here, just thousand of mosquittoes :)
Kids do seem to enjoy these things. I always did as a kid. Need to get back into that mind set.
Yikes .... thousands of skeeters..... no good !
That's right, as a child we didn't worry about such things..... and we're still here !
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Did you guys stay or go?
Some of both actually. We had no real reason to evacuate but did so to visit my parents, then came back early when it was barely over.
So no damages there?
No, Florida had it easy, just your standard coastal flooding.
Ok. But you guys are on the coast right?