MINOT – Brian and Michelle Farrington were standing in waist-deep floodwaters when they remembered the electricity, pulsing into their little shed by a suddenly submerged extension cord.
By then, they didn’t care.
Their two goats, family pets named Jazzabelle and Butterscotch, were screaming and in danger of drowning.
“We just had to get them out of there,” Brian said. Even worse, one of the frightened goats bashed him with its horn beneath his right eye, opening a gushing wound.
“Here I am, bleeding and trying to carry a goat,” Brian said. “It was chaos.”
Meanwhile, passers-by in cars offered the loan of canoes or slowed to gawk.
By late Sunday, the goats were safe at a neighbor’s farm. And the water from the nearby stream, Bog Brook, stopped rising.
On Monday, the couple’s house looked as if it were built on an island, rather than on the edge of a wide, carefully tended lawn.
All that marked the rock garden was the peak of a metal plant holder. A swing set, belonging to 8-year-old Taylor, was submerged to the top rung of her ladder. Patio furniture floated on the edge of an ice floe.
“This is where we want to retire and die,” Michelle said, looking at her sunken back yard. “We have our blood, sweat and tears into this. We did it all ourselves.”
The couple has lived here beside Route 124 for 11 years. They had never seen it like this.
During past springs, a bit of water crept onto the lawn of their 3-acre lot. It left the ground soggy enough for the Farringtons to create a new goat house on higher land, 30 or 40 feet away. They thought this spring they would be safe.
On Friday, the stream left a shallow pool on the edge of the lawn. By Sunday morning, it spread farther. The water deepened to a few inches in spots. Then, they left home to help Michelle’s mother pump out her basement.
“We were only gone for about three hours,” Michelle said. “It all came at once.”
They tried wading in and were shocked when the water reached their waists. They had to swim to reach the goats. Also inside were two chickens. One drowned.
They first took the goats and chicken to a tent-style car port. Then it flooded too. The animals will stay at the neighbor’s barn until the water goes down.
Brian estimated the loss of machinery and other articles at $7,500, which the family’s flood insurance won’t cover. The insurance covers only the house, not the things around it.
The water was even too much for their well, which was flooded, too. Their tap water turned brown and brackish.
But the water will recede.
“I think it’s peaked,” Michelle said Monday afternoon. All that’s left is the cleanup.
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