Affable animal's visit welcome during flood
By Deneen Gilmour
The Forum
HARWOOD, N.D. – Ruby Zvirovski is about to lose a friend.

She’s not upset.

Because when her friend leaves, it’ll signal the end of the great flood of 1997.

Ruby and her husband, Ed, live right next to the Red River on Cass County Road 22. The Red burst out of its banks and flowed two miles over land until it bumped into Harwood’s ring dike. But it didn’t even touch their home.

Surrounded by Red overflow, the Zvirovskis became something of an island. On April 11 they realized a young buck was sharing their island.

Rousted from his riverbottom home, the hungry deer scavenged for sunflower seeds beneath a backyard bird feeder. The buck even sniffed around their deck for food. So the couple started feeding him.

Now he’s a part of their daily routine. "We feed him apples, potatoes and sunflower seeds. He eats a big dish of sunflower seeds every day," Ruby said. "Sometimes he lays down in the yard. My friends keep saying, ‘Don’t you think you should name him?’ I say no. Because when the river goes, he’ll go too."

The Zvirovskis have lived along the Red River 19 years without a speck of flood trouble.

"We never worried before but this year everybody else was building a dike," said Ruby. "So we built a dike, too." Luckily, the water didn’t test their sandbag and plastic creation.

As floodwater recedes nearby, it reveals reminders of its power. "You could sit on our front steps and hear the river rushing over the highway. It sounded like Niagara Falls," said Ruby. That whooshing was the sound of water chewing off the highway’s shoulder. County Road 22 is now a ribbon of asphalt with 3- to 4-foot drop-offs on either side.

Five miles north, water still traps Ruby’s brother and sister-in-law. Living near the Red and Sheyenne confluence, they’ve spent a month marooned inside their farm home. They used a boat a few times to replenish supplies. But a car’s out of the question. Even after the rivers drop, they’ll have a hard time getting around on wheels because floodwater washed out many roads to their home.

In mid-April water covered land around the Zvirovski home as far as the eye could see. Ruby feels lucky.

"It was scary the day the river came into the yard," she said. The water rolled through a shelterbelt and into their apple orchard. She feared a massive snowbank would dam the Red’s overflow and flood their house. Before long, the river ate a hole in the snowbank and continued its trek toward Harwood.

"It’s how high you are, not how close you are to the river that counts," Ruby said.