Don Arnold’s mission of mercy began with a surprising phone call from a friend in Florida a little more than a week after Hurricane Katrina had ravaged the Gulf Coast.

“Don, are you crazy enough to go to New Orleans with me?” asked Dr. Ronald Lott, a longtime Orono veterinarian and founder of the Animal Orphanage in Old Town who retired to Florida about a year ago.

For a dog lover like Arnold, a carpenter who lives in Orono, it was more than just an opportunity to lend a hand in the animal rescue effort; it was a moral obligation to God’s creatures that he could not refuse.

“No question about it,” he eagerly told his old fishing buddy.

Two days later, Arnold flew into Tampa and met with Lott. The men loaded a couple of vans and trailers with supplies sent earlier by Maine veterinarians and made their way to the St. Francis Animal Shelter in Tylertown, Miss.

Along the way, Arnold wondered how the horrific images he’d seen for days on TV back in Maine – the fetid and diseased floodwaters that engulfed New Orleans, the looters slogging through the streets, the police sharpshooters on rooftops – would compare to the real hell he was about to wade into.

At Tylertown, the shelter’s 30-acre makeshift staging area was already teeming with sick and frightened animals that had been recovered from the storm-damaged region. Lott immediately began tending to the animals, while Arnold headed by box truck to New Orleans, about 100 miles south, to join other volunteers from around the country in the massive animal rescue effort.

Because of Lott’s affiliation with the Utah-based Best Friends organization, the nation’s largest no-kill animal refuge that had teamed up with the Louisiana Humane Society after the storm, Arnold was able to get National Guard clearance to enter the flooded neighborhoods by boat and on foot to search for abandoned pets.

“When I first went in I kind of wondered how people could leave their pets behind like that,” Arnold recalled this week from his Orono home. “But I realized they had no choice, they had to save themselves.”

Arnold and the other volunteers boated for days through neighborhoods that were under 20 feet of water or more. They plucked countless animals off roofs, and waded through the toxic cesspool to reach others. There were animals in cages, tied to car bumpers and mired helplessly in thick, black muck. Many were found dead inside houses, including one that a New Orleans policeman had begged Arnold to check on for him. Some of the survivors hobbled on broken legs, and most suffered from malnutrition and dehydration.

“They were frightened and defensive at first,” Arnold said, “but soon they’d be wagging their tails.”

One day, in a dry section of a neighborhood, Arnold heard a dog barking inside a house. When he broke in, the dog, a boxer mix, bolted excitedly down the hallway, racing past Arnold and out the door and right into the box truck.

“He turned and looked at me as if to say, ‘C’mon, let’s get going!’ It was the funniest thing you ever saw,” Arnold said, chuckling at the memory.

He worked in New Orleans for about 12 days, each night driving the truck filled with rescued pets back to the shelter in Mississippi. The Southern volunteers there treated him like family. They called him “Mr. Maine” and thanked him profusely for his generosity and compassion. By the time Arnold left the Tylertown shelter, several hundred animals were kenneled in acre upon acre of land.

He thinks about them every day since he returned to Maine – the resilient Katrina survivors waiting for homes, the pets still missing in Rita’s wake, and especially the first two dogs he rescued, quickly fell in love with, and plans to adopt. He named one Miss Orleans and the other Mr. Lumpy.

“I want to go back down there so bad I can taste it,” Arnold said. “There’s so much more work to do, and I want to bring my two dogs home to Maine.”

And the people at the Animal Orphanage in Old Town are working hard at the moment to make that happen. They’ve begun collecting supplies, for both humans and animals, that Arnold and Lott can take with them when they make the trip from Maine to Mississippi in two or three weeks.

“Because Dr. Lott founded our animal orphanage, we want to do everything we can to support his efforts at the St. Francis shelter in Mississippi,” said Michelle Dunphy of Old Town, who is coordinating the collection effort that began at the orphanage’s dog show and the Riverfest celebration held last weekend.

Dunphy said the Old Town refuge is seeking donated items such as nonperishable foods, blankets, towels (cloth and paper), bleach and bleach wipes, hand sanitizer lotions, waders and rubberized boots of all sorts, as well as flea and tick products. The refuge also hopes someone will provide an outreach vehicle, a camper-style RV, that Arnold and Lott can use to transport animals and to sleep in at night during their rigorous stay in Mississippi.

For Arnold, just waiting to resume his mission of mercy has been the hardest part.

“After meeting so many good people down there and seeing what those abandoned animals went through,” he said, “I feel obligated to get back and help in any way I can.”

Anyone interested in donating supplies or cash to the Katrina rescue effort should call the Animal Orphanage in Old Town at 827-8777, or Michelle Dunphy at 827-8989.