On the morning of October 21, 2008, and for the first time on a weekend day since we moved to the Ramona, California property, 7 years before, we decided to play hookie from our 24/7 work on the ranch, and sat down to watch a movie in the late morning. We got into the movie by about fifteen minutes when the telephone rang.

The caller, our friend Barb, concern in her voice asked, "I just heard there is a fire on your side of town. Do you see the smoke?" Nancy quickly made her way to the front door, and out onto the patio and driveway with her cell phone in hand. "I see it! It's a big one! Thanks for the call Barb. We'll run and check it out to see where it is and where it is heading."

Nancy hurried back into the house, rousing David to take a look at the black smoke. She then called everyone else on the ranch, Paula, Dwane, and Amos, giving them an immediate heads up to the fire, and a possible upcoming evacuation.

David hopped into the car and drove down the drive to check out the location of the fire. Everyone else got busy. This would be the second evacuation, if it came to that, for the equines and other animals on the Spots 'N Stripes Ranch. The first was during the 2003 CA Wildfires, when the fire came to within 300 feet of the south fence of the ranch.

While waiting for word from David, Nancy called several neighbors and friends, alerting them to the black and red monster that appeared to be growing by the minute. Then, making a decision, she gathered everyone on the ranch and began detailing the evacuation plan. "First, we need to get a halter on every equine. Then, we'll put a leadline on each one and tie them to the inside of their stalls. While you guys are doing that, I'll take my notebook and walk around and figure out which horses can be loaded free in the stock trailers with other horses and make the list." Everyone scrambled. Nancy called Barb back and asked her to hook up her trailer and make her way over. It looked bad, and was heading this way. Nancy also asked Barb to call their friend, Mary, and ask her bring her trailer up. Their farrier, Mike, called, and asked if he could help. His trailer and help was recruited as well. The Ranch had three trailer of its own, so Nancy called Jim and asked him to bring his truck up to hook to one of the trailers. Jim said he would be right up. Nancy hooked the Ranch's big trailer up to the dually, and one more truck was recruited for the last trailer, with friend Rob at the wheel.

In the meantime David was back with the news that the fire had started 7 miles away as the crow flies, and the winds were whipping up pretty good around the fire area. There was no question of which direction the fire was heading. "It's big, and it doesn't look like there's anything much to fight it here. All our trucks and helicopters are out fighting the fire in Malibu and the one down by the Mexico border. We may be on our own!"

Those words made everyone's hearts beat faster, and a nervous crew looked at Nancy. "Let's start loading." was the directive. "I've made the list of each group of horses to be loaded in each trailer. Let's start with the horses at the south end first. We can load the Caspians first, in three trailer loads, and get them over to Barb's." Barb's home was across town, and hopefully, would not be in the fire's path. After all, surely the fire would be knocked out before it could work its way all the way across the town of Ramona. "Then, we'll start loading all the miniature mares, and we'll take them to Barb's as well, and unload all of them into her riding arena." Nancy proceeded to call out the names of the horses to be brought to each trailer, where she proceeded to load each horse. They all willingly followed her direction, systematically loading, one after the other. Each driver was instructed to go as soon as the trailer door was closed and latched, making its way across town to unload so that it could come back quickly for a next load. Everything was handled quickly but quietly, without panic, in order to keep the horses relaxed and unpanicked, even though by this time the smoke was preceeding the arrival of the fire, making it increasingly difficult to breathe the dense, gray air.

The trailers came and went, until the Caspians and mini mares were all taken away. Next, with more room still available at Barb's, Dondi, Nancy's 26 year old quarter mare, Rosie, the homozygous paint mare, and several others, including some rescue horses, were loaded and taken to Barb's. Finally, Barb said she had all she could house. Now the question was, where to take the rest? While that question continued to remain unanswered, David worked on the solution, making calls to see where the evacuation points might be at this time in the game. Another hour came and went, and sky was becoming more and more filled with the dense, black smoke. The wind began picking up. It became increasingly more difficult to see clearly, but what was very clear was that the fire was making a bee line for the ranch, although no one could really believe that it would not be stopped before it came upon us. At this point, with more help having arrived, someone was dispatched to see how far the fire itself had advanced during the past couple of hours. The evacuation continued, with everyone now beginning to shield their eyes from the sand, leaves, and topsoil accompanying the ever increasing winds. Voices needed to be raised dramatically as the the wind's howls fought for dominance.

Then it was time to load the zebras, and the stallions, in separate stalls in the big trailer. Zintawa was loaded first. Then several other zebras were loaded; Zorro, Zuess, Zia, Kaia, then Rebellion's Duke, their homozygous paint stallion, and the beautiful Caspian stallion, Trojan. Zinnia, a young zebra mare hopped up last, and the door was closed. They all walked right on, without hesitation, without question. The animals all knew by this time that something was really wrong with the air, and every one followed Nancy on to the trailers as if knowing their lives were to depend upon them loading quickly and quietly.

The miniature horse stallions had been moved from the south end, behind the house, into the hot walker round pen, each tied to a post. As the wind began to roar to upwards of 100 miles per hour, it now contained not only leaves and dirt, but ash and live embers, as well as many unknown factors. As Nancy was loading a shetland pony rescue, Cookie, and her best friend, a Welsh pony mare, Pearl, into a trailer, the wind grabbed the trailer door from the girl holding it, ripping it out of her grasp, and smashed it against Nancy's shoulder, throwing her hard against the horse, and then dropping her to the ground. Nancy groped her way back up, pushed her way against the wind as the trailer door was once again opened and now held by four hands instead of two, and asked the two pony's to step in. They willingly did so, a repreive from the howling wind and red embers being driven into their new winter coats.

All the available trailers were now loaded, with just the miniature horse stallions left to load. "Where is the other trailer?", everyone yelled. A telephone call was made to the driver of the missing truck and trailer. "They won't let me back in," Mike, our farrier, frantically explained. "The sheriff and the fire department are blocking the road, and I've insisted, but they have their vehicles across the road at Keys and 3rd, and won't let me through!"

The wind was now forcing everyone left standing to lean and push directly into it in order to remain standing. We could only hear one another if we cupped our hands and yelled directly into the listener's ear, and then had to repeat it to make sure it was understood. The sky and ground all around us were red with embers. The embers were now whipping into our hair, on our clothing, and we closed and covered our eyes to save them. Nancy, who had remained absolutely calm, and who had masterminded and directed the evacuation with precision and truly shown how all these horses absolutely trusted her training in this crises, without even one refusal to walk through the hurricane level winds, and fiery embers, now, with her precious miniature horse stallions needing to be loaded, and no trailer left to load them in, screamed defiantly to the wind and fire, "My stallions are not going to die, they are NOT going to die!" The tiny little stallions at this point were all coughing, barely able to breathe, along with the rest of us, with the smoke so thick around them that it was difficult even to see where they were just feet away from us, tied in the round pen. Suddenly, Nancy ordered..."Everyone," she yelled, as loud as she could, though barely heard by the rest of us through the roaring of the wind, "Everyone load a mini stallion in the front seat of your vehicle, and in the back seat if you have one...come on...let's get them loaded, we're not letting them die!"

Jim's camper was on the back of his truck, with a 16 foot stock trailer attached. The trailer was already loaded with horses. He opened the door of the camper. The door opening was at least three and half feet in the air. Nancy made her way up into the camper, and once there, asked for Tango's lead line. She drew him up as close as she could. The trailer hitch and tongue of the stock trailer was a huge obstacle to the little 31" horse. Nancy looked Tango in the eye, and ordered the little horse to jump over 42" into the back of the camper. "Tango, OVER," she ordered. With one great leap, the couragous little stallion was in the camper. Nancy appeared at the door again in a flash. "Ok, give me Storm's lead!" Jim handed her the lead. Storm's 32" form flew into the air at Nancy's command and he landed in the camper. "Now, lift Topper up here, hurry!" There was no need to ask us to hurry. By now we all thought that the fire was directly upon us. We lifted Topper, just 27", into the back of the camper. We helped Nancy down, and closed the door. The rest of the little stallions had been loaded into everyone's vehicle, except Lil' Butt, 29" tall, who was unceremoniously hoisted into the back seat of Nancy's cab, along with Cash, the family's service trained dalmation.

There were several full size horses that just could not be loaded at this point. We were completely out of trailers, and now, we were completely out of time as well. We couldn't see 3 feet in front of our faces, we couldn't hear at half that distance. The heat was now unbearable. Our clothing and hair was burned from the flying embers. Our skin felt like we had a terrible sunburn, and our eyes were in danger of being severely damaged by the embers and dirt in the ferocious wind. Now 'things' were flying through the air around and at us, including lawn chairs, and anything else that the wind could pick up and throw at us. It was too late to do anything more. As we turned to look behind us, we were shocked to see a wall of orange where the house had been standing. The fire had been coming down the slopes from the north, and that is where we were monitoring it, but somehow, somewhere, during the past 1/2 hour, the fire had crossed the road a distance to the east, and had taken out a neighbors home, and then the firestorm grabbed the county land to the south, and travelled west to the back fence of the ranch, taking out the big barn, the stalls, the aviary, the RV garage, the 3 car garage, and then it took the house. When we turned to look, the house was fully engulfed.

We all jumped into our vehicles, now clearly surrounded by fire. The only way out was down the 1/4 mile driveway, where the fire was now eating the trees and shrubs along the east side. Nancy drove her big rig first, unseeing, the black smoke and embers so dense that the truck had to feel its own way. She managed to drive through the gate with slight vision, but then suddenly was directly in the fire rushing up the driveway. She moved as far to the left as she could, until she felt the fender of the truck dragging into the chain link fence on that side. She steered just slightly right, reaching out the window to try to feel the chain link as she crawled down the long drive with the flames licking the right side of the truck and trailer. Jim followed, just inches behind, with Dwane in a car with the yearling lab pub, Acer, in the front seat, who Dwane ran and grabbed out of his kennel at the last minute, and with Jethro, a little bay stallion, in the back seat. Rob followed, with Illusion, a two year old colt in his camper bed, and a stock trailer behind. Barb followed with a little pinto stallion, Torch, in her back seat, and her trailer full, and Mary with hers, and Paula in her car with her little dogs, and cats. David pulled up the rear in his Camaro. As they reached the end of the driveway, and turned left on to Old Julian Highway, they saw another wall of flames just on their left, hundreds of feet in the air, as their neighbors home was fully engulfed and destroyed by the red demon.

David thought that he might stay behind and fight the fire on the house, but long before the house caught fire there was no water. The water tower for the entire town burned, and there was no water for anyone to fight the fire with. It was useless. What was going to burn would burn. There were very few firefighters, no air fighters, and no water. The firestorm was winning. The entire town was at risk. So David had no choice but simply to leave behind their life's work, all their possessions, all his grandmother's heirlooms, memorabilia, their clothing, photos, even his wallet was still in the house. They both thought that once they had the horses loaded, they could run back up to the house, and grab what they could. The fire had other plans, and tricked them. It took them out from the front and the back, at the same time. They were surrounded by the red, evil flames of destruction, overtaking everything they owned, while they continued to work so hard to save the lives of their four legged charges, just what anyone would do.

Rob ran from stall to stall, from pen to pen, opening the doors for all the remaining animals that we were forced to leave behind.

As we drove through the smoke and fire towards Main Street, we all felt a quick sense of relief, and most of us had shaking hands, as we realized that we just escaped this devouring inferno with our lives and that of the equines that we worked so desperately to save. But with sad hearts we knew that we had been forced to leave many behind.

(The rest of the story to follow soon)

Zebra Discovery