Outside New Orleans
The drive out of New Orleans was a trip. I started off heading South and
West (not the most direct way back to Madison.) I saw a lot of neat birds
along the bayou: flocks of pelicans and ibis, great white egrets, snowy
egrets, and cattle egrets. I took a couple of roads south until they ended
in the marshes and canals leading to the Gulf. Lots of seafood industry--
crabs, shrimp and oysters. The roads were mainly through open land interlaced
with waterways. In order to see the deep swamp you needed a boat.
So I took a boat tour through the swamp. The guide was a Cajun named Ron
"Black" Guidrey along with his dog "Gatorbait". He
was very knowledgeable about the wildlife and history of the area, and promised
to make up answers to questions he didn't know. The Chicago Tribune had
mentioned him in their travel section one Sunday.
Most of Louisiana is private land and the section we were on was no exception.
It had been purchased by the Williams family for a few cents an acre.
They bought it to log the cypress trees, and dug canals to move the logs.
No one expected the wealth of oil under the land. Now they earn over a
million dollars in oil royalties, every day. More extensive canals have
been excavated for the petroleum activities, and these gave us access to
the swamp (without getting our feet wet.)
The swamp was impressive-- it's what you imagine when you think of a Southern
swamp. Trees covered with hanging moss. Palmettos growing in the underbrush.
Cypress knees poking out from the water, and of course alligators.
Now, alligators normally are dormant in the winter. It was a beautiful
day, that day, sunny and pushing 60°. Gators, like any reptile, are
cold-blooded and like to enjoy some solar radiation when they can. So,
that afternoon we saw small alligators perched on logs, sunning like turtles.
Of course, the big guys are the size of logs and can't easily find one
large enough. We saw two six-footers catching rays on an oil well's platform.
One slithered into the water when our boat came near, and disappeared with
disturbing immediacy. The other was mellow enough to stick around for photos.
The biggest gator we saw was nine feet long, lurking at the edge of the
water. A nutria was eating nearby, and if it came too close to the big
alligator it would have become dinner.
We saw lots of other wildlife as well. Nutria, imported from South America
by the Tabasco sauce people as fur-bearers, escaped during a hurricane and
are now gator snacks. They're large rodents, sort of like muskrats but
the size of beaver. Sometimes they're still trapped for fur and they seem
to be common roadkill. A few turtles dove off their logs as we approached.
The great blue herons put on a good show-- I'm always impressed at their
wingspan. A few white and snowy egrets joined the herons. Ibis,with their
curved beaks, clustered on cypress snags killed by sulfur byproducts from
the oil (now these pollutants are reinjected into the deep wells.) A pileated
woodpecker flew overhead, as did red-shouldered hawks, red-tailed hawks,
black vultures, anhingas, and a variety of ducks.
The swamp is no longer inhabited by humans, which disappoints some tourists
who expect to see Cajuns living in palmetto-thatched shacks built on stilts.
The guide told us all the Cajuns had moved out of the swamp because there
was no electricity, dance halls, or beer joints. They do use the swamp
for crawfish collecting, alligator hunting, fishing and hunting. There
used to be a market of sorts for Spanish moss. It sold for a couple of
cents a pound (after being dried) and was used in Model-A Fords as stuffing
in the seats. Now they probably use petroleum-based fiberfill from the
swamps' oil wells.
Near the end of our swamp tour the guide played us a few Cajun tunes on
the accordion and guitar, and sang in both French and English. The big
gator basked nearby, nutria swam across the canal, and hawks soared overhead.
A very satisfying moment.
After the tour ended, I felt like staying on in Terrebonne Parish for a
couple of weeks exploring more swamps and eating spicy food. Unfortunately
the Mastercard bills were already piling up, so I settled for one good Cajun
dinner before heading North. I ate at a place called Mulates in Breaux
Bridge just outside of Lafayette. It was a nice place, catering to tourists,
but not a tourist trap. Not too hokey either and the food was excellent.
I had catfish smothered in crawfish etoufee. The catfish was light and
crisply fried. The crawfish tails tasted like a slightly sweeter and richer
version of shrimp. Included were a spicy stuffed baked potato, garlic bread
and jambalya. Even though I had a ways more to drive that night I decided
I should try their house label beer. It's brewed for them by a New Orleans
microbrewery called Abita (who also make a dark beer called "Turbodog").
It was good and made me feel a little more in tune with the local drivers
who were drinking 16oz cans of beer and tossing the empties out the window.
(Louisiana doesn't have an open container law-- neither for walking the
streets of the French Quarter or driving on the state highways.) My only
regret was being too full to try dessert.
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