I took a trip with my maternal grandmother all the way from California
to Louisiana! We stayed with my great-aunt in Baton Rouge and hung out. Unfortunately,
I got sick my second day there (which turned into pneumonia when I got back, but
that's another link).
We hung around, visited old friends, ate gumbo, played with my great-aunts grandkids,
and talked about old times. (Not mine, my grandma's. My mother and I were born in California.)
Here's a picture of one of the highlights of the trip. I took my cousin
Nigel on a swamp tour just east of Baton Rouge. In this photo I'm petting the baby
alligator that came along for the boat trip.
Here's Nigel holding the baby alligator. The secret to making an alligator
purr is to firmly stroke it on the top of the head behind the eyes. The alligator will
close its eyes, lift its chin, and begin to purr like a kitty. Actually, they don't purr,
they burp repeatedly. That's the alligator way of expressing pleasure.
Look at this gorgeous shot taken by cousin Nigel, already with a good eye
for composition. The river stretches away into the distance in a place called Alligator
Bayou.
This is a shot of the lake at the edge of the river we traversed on the swamp tour.
The area consists of the bayou proper, a muddy forest that gets flooded during heavy rains; a levee
that protects the bayou from too much water; the river; and the adjacent lake with dead cypress
(?) trees poking past the surface. You can't see it well on this site, but I was taking a picture
of a nutria, a kind of giant rat intorduced to Louisiana from South America originally for their
fur. It's about halfway off in the distance.
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