SALEM, Ore. - For the rest of us, finding nesting ants in our home would mean only one thing: time to call the exterminator.

But for Salem resident Charlotte King, it set off alarms within her "biological earthquake detector."

King contacted KATU's Steve Dunn prior to Chile's devastating 8.8 magnitude earthquake, with her accurate predictions of the natural disaster that was just on the horizon for the South American country.

Her voicemail, left for Dunn at 6:30 p.m. Friday evening, was just a few hours before the earthquake hit.

King explains that her predictions are based on several factors - some she admits are quite strange - including ants nesting in her home and the sound of foghorns waking her out of a sound sleep in the middle of the night.

She maintains that certain people on earth can "sense" when earthquakes are coming and King experiences this phenomenon in the form of bodily aches and pains.

Interestingly, King believes that recent events in our area - including the deadly MAX accident this past week - foreshadowed the Chilean disaster thousands of miles away.

While it is understandable to look at this skeptically, King claims she has a proven track record of successful predictions, including being just 12 minutes off on her prediction of a Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980.

The key to earthquake predictions, King said, is that "people who are 'sensitive' to the ques crave popcorn before an earthquake."

Food for thought for Oregonians across the state: King says she has been experiencing blurry vision, which according to her indicates that a small earthquake will happen off the Oregon coast in the next couple of days.

Explains King: "When you walk into a room and you bump into furniture or you go to put sugar in your coffee and it hits the rim and it spills, you might think, 'Oh, I'm just clumsy,' but really that is a depth perception issue that comes with Oregon earthquakes."

Note the areas just off of Oregon's coast are hit by a number of earthquakes each year, without damage to homes on land. However, here are some ways to prepare for the inevitability of an earthquake down the road:

       1. Secure shelving to walls.

       2. Use earthquake wax to attach individual pieces to shelves.

       3. Keep fragile and/or valuable pieces away from cupboard edges: "Quite a few (pieces) fell out and smashed when the doors swung open," said David Huchthausen, a collector and victim of Seattle's 2001 earthquake.

        4. Insure everything of value that could easily be broken. (See also "Survey: Few Oregonians are insured for quakes" and "The cost of earthquake insurance for your home.")