Earthquakes and animals

Across Southern California, the 5.4 earthquake rattled furry nerves and ruffled feathers–literally.

“My birds felt it first,” reported one reader. “They were all fluffy and upset a few seconds before it happened.”

In Chino Hills, the epicenter of the quake, Alissa Sissung’s 10-year-old daughter, Delaney, was spending the day at a horse camp not far from her home. Just before the ground began to quiver, her daughter watched the horses and dogs stir nervously, Sissung told Times reporter Molly Hennessy-Fiske.

Another reader emailed: “I was feeding my horse when all of a sudden, he took off running. Seconds later is when the earthquake hit.”

And word filtered in to us from Garden Grove about a greyhound at a rescue shelter that rarely gets up, but who suddenly stood up and looked around, to the surprise of the humans there. Then the earthquake hit.

Whether they really could sense the earthquake a’coming–as fabled–or were as jolted into surprise as their people, the area’s animals seem to have withstood the temblor as well as humans did.

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Tagged as: Animal Shelters, Animals, Baby Animals, Birds, California, Cats, Chino Hills, Dogs, Earthquakes, Garden Grove, Greyhounds, Horses, Kittens, Pets