How farm animals survived Hurricane Milton: ‘Animals are smarter than… 1/2
Sydney PageOctober 11, 2024 at 9:12 a.m. EDT
As Hurricane Milton was fast-approaching, Sara Weldon and her husband, Rick Bass, made a decision: They would not leave their animals.
The couple — who live on a small farm in Clermont, Fla., between Tampa and Orlando — rode out the storm on their seven-acre property with their farm animals. They have 10 donkeys, nine cows, four goats, one cat, six dogs and about 100 chickens.
“We raised every animal since they were babies. They’re basically our children,” said Weldon.
The couple — whose home was not in a mandatory evacuation zone — knew it would have been safer for them to leave the state, they said, but they wouldn’t have been able to transport all their animals with them.
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“We couldn’t move everybody, and there’s no way we would leave them,” she said. “We just made the decision we’re going to prepare and do everything we can to keep ourselves and our animals safe.”
Weldon posted about it on social media, and got a huge response.
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“We’re not evacuating, and please don’t ask me to,” Weldon said in a tearful video, which has been viewed 4.2 million times. “We’re not leaving them.”
People around the world followed, anxiously watching for updates as the storm hit.
“Australians are crying with you, we wish we could bring you and your animals here so badly,” someone commented on Weldon’s TikTok.
“I pray for you from Germany! I can feel your pain” another person wrote.
Weldon — who got hundreds of offers from farm owners across the country to take in her animals — explained that the safest thing for most farm animals during a hurricane is to leave them outside rather than in a barn.
Weldon and her husband filled up their bathtubs in their home with water and bought plenty of supplies ahead of the storm. Outside, they secured all the fencing and stocked up on food for the animals. They kept their 8-month-old donkey indoors with them, as well as their baby chickens.
“Animals are smarter than us,” Weldon said in a phone interview with The Washington Post. “They instinctively know where to go to be safe.”
She and her husband saw that firsthand, when they went outside at 2:30 a.m. during the storm to check on the animals.
“Our pack of donkeys were huddled together,” Weldon said. “They huddle together to be a break in the wind. It’s really cool.”
Still, “I went to bed not knowing if I would see them again,” she said.
Social media accounts like Weldon’s went viral as followers worried about the survival of farm animals across Florida — including Graci Lovering’s horse and 10 cows. She posted a TikTok of her painting names and phone numbers (using an All-Weather Paintstik) on her animals in case the fence surrounding the property was damaged and the animals escaped. It got more than 26 million views.
Lovering and her family decided not to leave their 32-acre property in Lakeland, Fla. They, too, stayed close to the animals, as their home was also not in a mandatory evacuation zone.
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