Gustav cottage

• By CAROL ANNE BLITZER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Sep 16, 2008 - Page: 1E - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Children in the 2200 block of Terrace Avenue got a lesson in anthropology along with a lesson in life following Hurricane Gustav.

With direction from landscape architect Jenni Zell, mother of two of the children, they built their very own forked post house on the neutral ground in front of the Zells’ house. 

The young builders — Ava Zell, 6; Luke Zell, 9; Liam Moppert, 8; Olivia Moppert, 13; Sophia Mouk, 8; Louis Mouk, 10; Carolyn Robinson, 11; and Henry Robinson, 12 — used storm debris that had been stacked by neighbors on the median.

“There were a lot of building materials out here, a lot of stuff,’’ said Jenni Zell, who came up with the idea of building the house.

The forked post house, as she explained, is one of the earliest structures dating back 30,000 or 40,000 years. “We find evidence of these structures everywhere — Australia, North America and even types in South America,’’ she said.

The concept is to sink in the ground tree limbs with forks at about the same height. Shorter forked limbs are placed in back and front of the main posts. Traditionally, smaller branches are tied into the forks with vines. Twigs and small branches are then used across the tied branches to create a mat on which leaves can be placed over the exterior. 

“We found the posts in the pile,’’ Luke Zell said. “We dug holes and put the posts in and put supports in to hold the posts and then filled the holes back in with dirt.” Their house has three center posts.

Luke’s sister, Ava, worked on the “vestibule” and helped make furniture from logs. “We made a bench, a table and put in a Christmas tree,’’ Ava said.

Jenni Zell wanted the children to be occupied in the days without power following the storm, but she also wanted them to learn how their ancestors had lived thousands of years ago.

“The real houses would have been bigger,’’ she said. “Some of them actually contained a circle of rocks in which a fire would have been built, not so much for cooking or heat, but to smoke away the bugs.” Often the houses had a hole in the ceiling for a simple version of a chimney.

The young builders used some modern conveniences like string instead of vines and scissors rather than flint to cut the vines and string. They also picked up lots of asphalt roofing, which made a perfect floor covering. And they used a hand saw to cut splinters from stumps to make their furniture.

The house project helped the children understand that something good can come from an event as scary as a  hurricane. Several neighbor families including the Zells spent the hurricane together playing games like Black Jack and Parcheesi.

“I wasn’t scared. I knew what was going to happen,’’ said Luke.