Lightning Strike!

Florida is the lightning capital of the world. It strikes all sorts of things all the time here, but it still freaks you completely when it happens close to you.

We have many tall pine trees in the backyard of our new home, thankfully they are taller than the house. This past week lightning hit the tree closest to the house, maybe 50 feet away. The picture to the left shows the pale zig zag line down the entire tree where the lightning blew the bark off.

To the right you can see the scaring better that was left behind. I hope the tree doesn't die and fall over.

My daughter was sitting in the family room in front of the sliders that face the yard where this tree is and said she saw hit and it was bright red not white as one would expect.

My husband is a bit of a tech geek, and a bit anal retentive (I do love him dearly) so all the computers, printer, big screen, etc all have battery back-ups and surge protection. It did blow out our modem and the phone system because it came through the copper wire in the telephone line. It did smell a bit burnt in the house for a few hours. We had to call out the dsl people to bring a new modem (can't live without access!), but I still do not have a working telephone in my house. We do have four cell phones between the five of us, so it is only distressing the youngest child who cannot speak to her girl friends for 4 hours a day.

I was mostly upset that I missed seeing this strange occurrence right in our own backyard and worried that my dear chicken was either scared to death or because she is surrounded by metal fence- electrocuted. She was just fine and squawking at me like nothing unusual had happened.

Isn't she pretty.... she needs friends.