One second he was absent-mindedly shoveling the old, frozen-over snow fall from several days past, and the next he was thrown to the ground as the world spun and bucked like a rodeo mustang underneath him.

He was flailing his arms trying to hold onto something, anything, as the ground humped and twisted, shrieking in it's agony beneath him. His thoughts and perhaps his screams were drowned out by the howling roar of a million freight trains filling the otherwise subdued winter morning air.

His mind was screaming, "Earthquake! earthquake!" Then the profanity came streaming out like a full on fire hose. Or maybe it wasn't his mind screaming, he couldn't tell.

Gasping for the breath stolen by the body slam to the snowbank, the burning hoarseness of his breathing belied the fact that he was the one screaming, unnoticed in that roaring, howling insanity totally filling the world around him.

As the world stopped spinning and the howling died down, he was able to hear other sounds, very much non-typical sounds for a cold winter's day in December. The howling of dogs, and the excited clatter of chickens was first and foremost, the deep rumbling of the earth taking second stage to the excited animal world.

An odd crackling noise interspersed with pops and fizzles propelled him off his bruised side looking for the fire. The first tendrils of smoke coming from a shattered window made it clear what to do next.

Fire! fire! Someone shouted, but he couldn't tell where it came from.