“They were falling out of the trees like apples”
If the title wouldn’t have been too long I might also have included a line about dead people riding motorcycles. But read on.
Two weeks ago, I published a post, The Day After Next Week, about current weather records. That featured a picture of Caramelo, the horse in the area of south Brazil trapped for four days surrounded by floodwater, balancing on two strips of slippery asbestos roofing tile on a flooded farm building.
I am happy to report that firefighters and veterinarians sedated and immobilized the horse and strapped him into a Zodiac boat. The operation involved four inflatable boats and four support vessels and was carried live on television. Caramelo is doing fine.
Caramelo was one of about 10,000 rescued animals from that flood. 12,600 hogs and hundreds of thousands of poultry died. It rained 20 inches in just a few days, displacing more than 600,000 people. Not all made it to a roof.
The ongoing heat has also been roasting animals on land and in the water across southeast Asia. An estimated 40 people are dying each day in Myanmar. People are dying while riding motorcycles to desperately try to get cool.