The Strange White Doves by Alexander Key Read Free Book Online

Evidently the bolt struck the chimney, for it shattered, and a large part of the masonry fell through the roof and smashed the chair where Samuel Leigh had been asleep only seconds before.
    I have seen lightning like that come out of nowhere on a tropic night, and it is something the best weatherman on earth would have trouble predicting. Yet Samuel Leigh’s shepherd dog not only knew it was coming, but he knew exactly where it was going to strike.
    In 1966, just before the Russian earthquake at Tashkent, a spitz dog forced his mistress to leave the house. She had no idea what was wrong until the quake came a few minutes later, reducing the place to rubble. Another dog, a boxer, refused to let his mistress park her car in a certain spot in San Francisco. Shortly after she had driven away, a second car parked there and was crushed by a huge tree that fell on it. Similar incidents involving pets and their masters, or some member of the family, happen all the time. Whole chapters could be filled with them. A great many other incidents, such as the one involving Pepper, go largely unnoticed because they are not spectacular.
    Ernest Thompson Seton, the naturalist and writer, tells of a dog he owned out West that howled and made such a fuss one day that it kept him from making the long ride into town. An Indian friend told him afterward that the dog had surely saved his life, for something terrible would have happened if he had not stayed home. Since the day of the doves I have come to believe that absolutely.
    At first I thought that only a few specially gifted creatures, like the bakery cat and Samuel Leigh’s dog, were tuned in to the future. Then I remembered what I had read about the birds of Krakatau, a volcanic island between Java and Sumatra. Suddenly one day all the birds left. No one could figure out why. A few hours later the island suddenly blew up, killing every living thing on it, including over 36,000 people. It was the most violent volcanic explosion in modern history.
    There is no record of the island’s animals. But I’m sure they knew something was going to happen, for the animals as well as the birds left the area of Mt. Pelée on Martinique before it erupted. That explosion was not so violent as Krakatau’s, though it killed more people.
    I lived on the Gulf Coast long enough to be brushed by a goodly number of hurricanes, each of which was preceded by a flight of frigate birds. That is the only time you will see these great flyers near the mainland.
    Why? Because the storm drives them there? That’s what people say, and they add, “Whenever you see frigate birds, you can bet a hurricane isn’t far away.”
    The statement is only partly true, for a careful check shows that a frigate bird never allows himself to be driven just anywhere by a storm. He takes off long before it arrives, often in perfectly calm weather, and keeps well away from the path of the dangerous area—the part with the highest winds and rains. There is a good reason for this. Unlike other sea birds, the frigate does not have waterproof feathers. There is nothing wetter than a hurricane rain, and to be caught in one could mean death.
    Another fellow that doesn’t like hurricanes and tunes in to them ahead of time, is the little fiddler crab. You will see him by the thousands on every marshy beach around the Gulf. He doesn’t mind the wind and rain, but an extremely high tide, prolonged by a storm, gives him the jitters. Being a land crab, he has to have a certain amount of air, and a hurricane tide can trap him in his burrow and seal him there. Therefore the moment he receives advance warning that trouble is due, he heads for high ground.
    I have seen fiddler crabs cover the road to Marshy Point well ahead of a dangerous tide. Naturalist Ivan Sanderson reports seeing a great army of them heading inland from the Caribbean coast, his first indication that a hurricane was on the way.
    Snakes, too,