Before booking a kayak tour through the Jean Lafitte National Park bayou, I messaged the host. The tour promised a slow paddle through the bayou with likely sighting of swamp birds, turtles, and maybe some gators. Kayaking and alligators didn’t seem like they should go together, so I asked,
“Are there alligators? I want to do this, but it seems totally crazy to me. Am I nuts?”
“There are alligators, but you’re not crazy!! It’s an awesome time!!”
A friend sent me a video of an alligator knocking a kayaker out of his boat. The man righted himself and paddled away, but still, it got my brain working. I decided to go with a bigger boat.
Instead, I booked a tour with a group of people on a swamp boat, and boy am I glad I did. Turns out there are a lot of gators in Jean Lafitte National Park. It’s sort of what it’s known for. Hey, I’m a northerner; what do I know about swamps and bayous? Shoot, I didn’t even realize they were different things before now.
Swamps and Bayous
In New Orleans, it only takes about 30 minutes to get into a swamp. I went to Jean Lafitte National Park and reserve because it is the biggest. They do great work to preserve the various sections from environmental and human deterioration.
There were about 10 of us on the boat as we crept our way slowly into the bayou. The boat guide, Captain Julien, was Cajun and spoke in a cross between French and English with a southern dialect that sounded like he had a bunch of marbles in his mouth. Luckily for me, he had a habit of saying everything twice, which meant I was able to understand almost half of what he said.
From what I understand, Cajuns are descended mainly from French Canadians the British drove from Acadia and settled in the fertile bayous in southern Louisiana. Cajuns are a white subset of Creoles derived from African, French, Spanish and Native American peoples. They’re a rare and unique culture of people who mostly populate the rural parts of South Louisiana and make it the amazing place it is.
Into the Bayou
As we boarded the boat and Captain Julien used a long stick to push us out into the water, he explained that we only might see alligators.
“It’s winner,” he said. “It’s winner, so them gators ain’t too active. They ain’t too active in winner.”
While the gators might not have been very active in winter, there were plenty of other animals I never expected. Immediately we saw three black baby pigs snorting and wobbling in the swamp. In Jean Lafitte National Park, the Barataria Preserve has 26,000 acres of wild Louisiana wetlands including swamp, bayous, and marsh. Because of this, there are many dozens of species thriving in the area and hunting is regulated.
“They been round here all day, Julien said of the pigs. “I thought we might see em’ cause they been here. Good gator eaten, those. Good gator eaten.”
I envisioned a giant alligator jumping up out of the water and closing its jaws on the hapless little baby pigs. I shuddered.
We slowly glided through the bayou, tall brown reed grass on either side of us. We flowed with the water. A bayou, while appearing swamp-like, is a slow-moving river. A swamp is just a piece of spongy land saturated with stagnant water. If you’re now wondering, a marsh is an area of wetlands near fresh water that’s often flooded. They’re all wetlands. There are all three blending together in Jean Lafitte National Park. They have the same water-loving plants and trees, tall Cypresses, Spanish moss hanging down, water lily, and reedy grasses.
Gator hunting in the bayou
Julien said (I think) that gators are avid breeders. They’re hunted to keep the population low and provide those fried gator bites people in the city seem to be so fond. His people used to be gator hunters, back when it was more lucrative, but now independent people can’t make much of a living catching gator for more than personal needs.
He told us they catch alligators by dangling raw chickens with a big hook from a fishing line a foot above the water. The gators smell the chicken and jumps out of the water to grab it. A gator can jump pretty high; big ones can reach up to six feet. Think about that next time you’re dangling your arm over the side of the boat.
Because of this hunting technique, the hunters don’t have to be present; they just set the trap. Once the hook is in the gator, they’re stuck on the line until the hunter comes back and shoots it in the head to kill it. Since they sell the gators by the pound, they don’t want small ones. To get a big one, they tie the chicken pretty high where the small ones can’t reach. Now you know. If you see a chicken dangling from a line in a swamp somewhere I’d suggest not getting too close.
Other animals or gator lunch
He talked for a while about the price per pound you could get for the gator, not that anyone asked. Eventually, we saw a massive crane, and that changed the subject. The bird held perfectly still as a statue until, out of nowhere, it would dip its head into the water like it was shot out of cannon.
We saw a six-point deer ambling near the water’s edge right after that. Captain Julian said it was big enough that it didn’t have too much to fear. Smaller gators wouldn’t bother trying, but if it got near the edge when a 10-footer was close, that deer would be a goner too.
“Are there a lot of 10-footers here?” I asked.
“Sho is, cher, sho is.” But they sleep now, don ya’ll worry. They sleep.”
He explained that, with a big prey likely to fight, the alligators snap their powerful jaws on them and pull their catch underwater. An alligator’s jaws don’t open and close quickly enough to eat a live victim without it getting away, so drowning it makes the job easier. Once their jaws catch hold, almost nothing will pry them open again.
Bayou birds know people
Spanish moss covered the bare branches of the trees we passed and looked closely in the tall swamp reeds for any lurking killers. Eagles flew above our heads back and forth from a giant nest they had high up in the highest tree of the swamp. Eagles make the biggest nests of all the birds, but hurricanes often keep them small here in Louisiana. Small, being about 10 feet wide in this case.
Further on, we saw an owl in an old Oak tree. It blended in so well that even looking right at the wise thing, I could barely see it. Once I did, though, it seemed to see me too. Its eyes shifted back and forth in ready alertness.
“They know me,” Julian said in answer to a question about why the animals didn’t run from our approach. “Them use ta this boat. They know me.”
He said he’d run thousands of boats through this bayou over the years, but times are changing.
Changing times in Jean Lafitte National Park
Before it was Jean Lafitte National Park, it used to just be the bayou and the boat captains used to be a lot freer with what they did out here. But, to protect the habitat and the people, the federal government has regulated things as they tend to do.
Julian said they used to hunt the gators whenever they wanted, and now it’s only during specific periods. Also, they used to feed the gators to get them to approach the boats, but that was considered dangerous, so they had to stop. I, for one, was grateful for that, even if we hadn’t seen any alligators yet. Our captain seemed to have more confidence in the safety of alligators than I was comfortable with.
Mama Gator and her Babies
Someone had asked about the danger (Ok, it was me), and Julian said alligators are docile animals. The only time an alligator is likely to be aggressive is when they’re protecting their offspring; he said as we rolled up on a nest of baby alligators. There were about six of them, and they were roughly the size of a toddler’s leg. They lay in a cluster near the water’s edge in a bunch of marsh grass. Their yellow eyes with long slits like cat eyes examined us as we snapped pictures before they scrambled away. Off to the left, momma gator raised her head slowly from the depths she’d been hiding in, glaring at us.
After a minute, not sensing any danger, she sunk back under the water to the sleep she’d been enjoying. However, had she felt the need to protect her offspring, Julien said, that mama could have lunged at us going 20 – 35 miles per hour, which is pretty quick when you’re in a bayou. Especially, if you were in say, a kayak.
Alligator Life in the Winter
Julien said there were likely several alligators hidden in the mud at the bottom of the bayou. Alligators rest in the winter, becoming nearly paralyzed with cold. Being cold-blooded, they’re heated by external elements. Since it was only about 60 degrees, they were still and hidden in the mud below.
The water was shallow, low enough to stand up in some parts. I imagined swimming in there and stepping on an alligator. I stopped the fantasy before it could go further.
“Mosly they don botha ya, cher” he said. “Ya could swim in some parts fine if ya wanted, I’ve din it. They don botha ya. Ya could swim.”
It takes a special kind of crazy for some things, I thought.
The size of fear realized
Most of the gators in this Jean Lafitte National Park area are between six and eight feet long. The bigger ones have long been hunted off, but a few remain. Soon, we spotted a 10-foot gator swimming with agility away from our boat. Its body was as wide as mine, and in my current winter state, that’s saying something.
Then we saw a huge 12-foot gator surface, covered in mud. He looked like one of those big alligator inflatable rafts my mom used to buy us kids to use in the pool during the summer. Two of us kids could fit on it at the same time. I’d always thought it was exaggerated in size, but I was young and stupid. He watched our boat cautiously but didn’t seem bothered by our presence. Soon, he sunk back down below, awaiting a hapless swimmer, no doubt.
Julien said that gator surfaced in the presence of our boat because he remembered the good old days. Once, they had been trained to approach the boats because the guides would feed them. They’d swim up, jaws open, hoping for a marshmallow to be tossed into their maw.
Once the swamps were turned into state parks, new regulations were put in place and feeding the gators from tourist boats were deemed unsafe. Go figure. The government ruins everything. Darn it.
Out of Jean Lafitte National Park
On the way back to the dock, I watched the eagles circle overhead and thought about that kayak tour I almost took. I don’t think a kayak is 12-feet long. I wondered if that big old gator would have seen it as an opportunity or still would have sunk back into the mud? Either way, I was sure glad I opted for a bigger boat.
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