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| Left to right... Jaylen Bannerman-Oden, Dr Carol Osborne, Drake Heath, Leah Huff |
Monday, February 1st,
I had the chance to do something truly amazing. My evening began in the lounge
studying for a biology exam, when my GroupMe went off with a message from Sandy
Moss with Bobcat HART. There had been a gas leak in Crooksville, and an immediate
evacuation of people and animals had been started. DART was going to help, and
Sandy was giving us the chance to go along. When I read this, my first reaction
was “I’m going”, however, my second was that I had a bio exam I really needed
to study for and it was already 10:30 pm. I made the decision to go, and I’m
glad I did.
Yes, it was a late night,
but I felt like this was our chance to help, and that’s what HART is all about.
I’m a Pre-Vet major, so this is part of what I want to do with my life, and I
felt like it was where I belonged. For that reason, I know that if I stayed, I
wouldn’t have been able to study anyway because I would have been thinking
about what I should have been doing. Boots on the ground. It turned out that
Drake and I from HART, and Jaylen (a friend of mine), were the ones to rush out
to Briarhill Veterinary Clinic to meet Dr. Osborne and Sandy. There, we loaded
up cages, water, pens, and anything else we thought we would need, and waited
on Tammi to show up with DART. After putting in the last cage, Dr. Osborne gave
us a rundown of what was going to happen when we got there, explaining how the
procedures were going to go, and how we would be helping. So we set off on the
hour drive to Crooksville.
Arriving,
we went inside the bus garage where they were setting up for any animals to
arrive, and Dr. Osborne went to find the one in charge. Turns out, they
evacuated half the town, but they were estimating that everyone would be able
to go home around 2:30am, and that they were fixing the leak fairly quickly.
They also had no way of getting the animals to us, and they had managed to keep
it all under control. He thanked us for coming out, saying that it was amazing
we did, and that he was glad we had this program and was so willing to help.
After we got back to the clinic in Albany, we unloaded the trucks, said
goodbye, and made it home around 4:00 am.
Even
though we didn’t get to help, and we turned around and went home, it was still
a great experience. We were there, willing, and ready to help…and that’s what
truly matters. I’m grateful to call myself a member of Bobcat HART, and I know
that we’ll always be there whenever needed. There’s some truly amazing people
doing amazing things here, and I’m thrilled to be a part
of it.
Submitted by Leah Huff
