Evacuate and abandon the children?

Well, they do allow children on New Orleans evacuation buses. Pets, however, are forbidden.

Reading the Washington Post this morning (no link, Blogger is barely functioning right now) at least a few families are resisting evacuation because it means abandoning their pets to certain death.

My doggie is gone, but were she were alive I would not leave her without a significant struggle (It's a bit more complex now since our kids need me alive too, but I'd try to save everyone.)

Is there some middle ground that could be taken for late evacuation? Some shading of the rules? Something like "come back when you're done with everyone else"?

Heck, most dogs are better bus companions than my kids.

Update 9/6/05: A Humane Society story tells us sometimes the rules do get bent ...

...Moret Williams and Sebastian left New Orleans together. Sebastian floated on an air mattress at his owner’s side as Moret Williams waded through polluted, neck-deep floodwater, pulling the mattress along with him. Man and beast managed to reach an elevated portion of Interstate 10, but the helicopters that were taking evacuees to buses weren’t allowing pets on board.

“There was no way I was leaving without him,” Moret Williams says, and so he did what so many have had to do in the past week: He improvised. He put Sebastian in a large black trash bag and begged him not to make noise.

Amazingly, the dog obeyed, though he did squirm at one point—a point that could have ruined the whole plan. “He bumped against the pilot,” Moret Williams says, a small smile creeping onto his face. “The pilot just goes, ‘I didn’t see nothing.’”

They need donations. I'll do one in honor of our old doggie.