Katrina Evacuees Distraught Over Lost Pets

the state is the enemy of pets because pets do not recognize uniforms.

they're a threat.

pets recognize people, pets recognize neighborhoods.

like plato's just city, which was guarded not by bureaucrats but dogs.

depriving people of their pets is the first priority in establishing order favorable to state authority.

UPDATE Sept 8, Historian Douglas Brinkley on Imus : I went into the water the other day on boats, and I just brought people out, just relatively normal people, except they wouldn't leave their animals, wouldn't leave their dog, and, because I wasn't an authority, in our boat was a minister and kind of a rag-tag band of us going out there helping people, I was able to get the people in a long as you brought their dog with them, I would think there would be a measure for somebody allowing a dog to be with them, otherwise a whole group of people who have no kids, who are lonely, and animals become part of their life, and they just don't have the heart to leave it behind, they'd rather die with the dog that leave with[out] the dog kind of thing, so you have to bring them, and so some of the human touches are gone when a it's a bureaucracy that clicks in ...

real audio

entire interview real audio


end update



ATLANTA -- As Valerie Bennett was evacuated from a New Orleans hospital, rescuers told her there was no room in the boat for her dogs. She pleaded. "I offered him my wedding ring and my mom's wedding ring," the 34-year-old nurse recalled Saturday. They wouldn't budge. She and her husband could bring only one item, and they already had a plastic tub containing the medicines her husband, a liver transplant recipient, needed to survive.