Tonight I cried...

Tonight I cried...while watching CNN. Cameron Parish, Louisiana: There are thousands of dead cattle and horses and wildlife. I know Cameron parish very well. We used to go down to Holly Beach and go crabbing. Life is so simple down there. It's heartbreaking to see the pictures. This place had such a simplicity of life...and now that simple life is gone. There aren't tons of fancy high dollar houses...but there are farmers and family homes with animals. Teachers, store owners, shrimpers...real people that make up the real fabric of our state. Not those screaming idiots who looted and embarrassed us on national television. I remember the many times that I walked through the Creole Nature Trail. You'd walk down the trail...and on either side...gators, nutri-rats, birds, rabbits....and you'd be walking through the middle of it. I saw it on CNN tonight...and everything was dead. All the animals...dead. The cattle that are alive need help really bad. They are trying to get food and fresh water to them...but they are so disoriented that they aren't sure how they are going to help them.

I don't know if I can tell this story in a way that does it justice. It was one of the funniest things that ever happened...and it happened in Hackberry, Louisiana. M and I went down there with M's sister and husband and her husband's brother and his wife. We would go every year. We'd go to the Creole Nature trail and go crabbing...and we'd stay on the beach in a simple old beach house. We'd ride down the beach roads and go up in the bayous to count the gators. Then we'd grill steaks and boil shrimp...and drink beer and margaritas. Every year, we'd have a "drink of the year." Well, this particular year, my brilliant husband brought his Crocidile Dundee knife (for protection from the gators...heh, heh, heh). Sometimes, I don't know how things are processed in that little brain of his. Anyhoo, we're crabbing...and M sees a gator...so he acts like he's going to sneak up on the gator. With perfect timing, my brother-in-law sneaks up on M and rustles the grass behind him...and scares the crap out of M. M thought it was another gator behind him...he screamed and ran away from the bayou like a big chicken! Just thinking about my big burly husband running up that hill with his Crocidile Dundee knife away from a gator that wasn't even there...makes me laugh til I hurt!

Okay...this is good. First, I cried because of the loss of another wonderful place where my memories have been made. But thankfully, I'm ending this post with a smile because of those memories.