Word: raccoons
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Perhaps, but in the middle of the disaster Midwesterners showed a stunning good humor, resilience and neighborly spirit. It was especially notable in the Iowa capital, Des Moines, which was hit possibly harder than any other big city. A flood along the Raccoon River at the beginning of last week knocked out the city's water-treatment plant. Officials expect to send water for bathing and flushing toilets coursing through the pipes again this week, but there will be no running water safe to drink for an additional three weeks or so. Meanwhile, residents seeking water for any purpose last...
...another week of hauling sandbags, scrounging for bottled water and fleeing for higher ground in nine Midwestern states as the Mississippi River and its tributaries continued to flood. In Iowa, days of rain sent the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers flowing over their banks, inundating farmland and knocking out Des Moines's main water-purification plant, leaving 250,000 people without running water. President Bill Clinton ended a Hawaiian vacation early to tour affected areas. "I've never seen anything on this scale before," he said. Clinton promised to ask Congress to approve $2.5 billion or more in disaster relief...
Elders has been in battle most of her life. It was a struggle to escape rural Schaal, Arkansas. She started school at four, walking five miles daily to catch the bus. At night, she helped her father stretch raccoon hides, which he sold to Sears. After college, she enlisted in the Army and trained as a physical therapist. Later, she was the only black woman in her class at the University of Arkansas medical school...
...ghosts: a black man Robicheaux saw murdered as a teenager whose corpse resurfaces, and a Civil War officer sometimes accompanied by battered but unbowed troops. Throw in the Mafia, visiting Hollywood moviemakers, a serial killer and such fillips as Robicheaux's adopted Salvadoran daughter and pet three-legged raccoon, named Tripod, and one has a gumbo to clog any narrative. It doesn't, because Burke writes prose as moody and memory-laden as his region...
...raccoon population is large," he said. "In any city or town the danger is ten times greater than out in the woods somewhere...