Beyond Words

Today I read this on a blog from New Orleans.

2:11 A.M. - ATLANTA (AP) -- 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.
Such emotional scenes were repeated perhaps thousands of times along the Gulf Coast last week as pet owners were forced to abandon their animals in the midst of evacuation.
In one example reported last week by The Associated Press, a police officer took a dog from one little boy waiting to get on a bus in New Orleans.

"Snowball! Snowball!" the boy screamed.
He cried until he vomited.

The policeman told a reporter he didn't know what would happen to the dog.

I sighed and hurt for the little boy.

Later as I sat in Mass tears began to stream down my cheeks and I heard that child screaming inside my head,

"Snowball. Snowball".

This image of the loss and pain of the innocent cut through all the defenses I had held so tightly in place since last Monday.

Feelings beyond words overwhelmed me as I wept.

"Snowball. Snowball"