The Adventures of Alvin: Episode 15

Struck by lightning (Summer of 2005 or 2006)

Back in the day, we had some bad luck with our property getting struck by lightning on multiple occasions when we had some bad storms (both the actual house and the pool shed have been struck). The first time occurred when my mom left for a trip for a week and was already nervous to leave me home alone for that long, but I reassured her I would be fine. While I was away at the day camp I worked at, there was a bad thunderstorm and fortunately the damage had been done without me being inside the house. I arrived home to find two weiners (we had two weiner puppies at the time) both in their cage screaming and scared, our other dog Annie running around frantically, and Alvin nowhere to be found. I looked all around the house to find him hiding upstairs, with that devilish glow in his eyes, but he was drifting off into space and shivering and I couldn't snap him out of his for hours. When I went to take the dogs out back there were bricks all over the yard, and I was so confused as to what had happened. Were there terrorists? Was someone dropping bricks from the sky? I made the dogs hurry up and brought them in and locked the door because I was scared. I didn't bother to take the time to really look around or be observant because at age 15 or 16, that was strange and something weird was going on and I just wanted to get inside in case more bricks would be coming down.

I wasn't smart enough to just look up... to find the cause, but my mom was when she got home. Our chimney exploded and sent bricks flying everywhere, with the top of the chimney on the ground and bricks sent through the all glass greenhouse attached to the house and through the back deck. When my mom was talking to a neighbor he said that he actually watched our house get struck through his window... so there was our proof of what had happened. The other dogs seemed to get over the shock they may have experienced being inside the house but it took Alvin quite some time to get out of his crazy funk that had taken over him, almost as if he was hypnotized. Since he already had enough mental issues, it was hard to tell if the traumatic experience ever took much of a permanent toll on him or not.