The News
So much has happened since I last wrote. Let me mention some fun activities we have enjoyed:
Elvis Costello at Jazz Fest
Whitney Plantation Audio Tour about slavery
Great restaurants: Zasu, Peche, Bywater American Bistro,
Music at Snug Harbor, Zony Mash
Fun with #1Son and Rachel and Joe.
Swamp Tour
Visiting with Eve and Bill in NOLA
Walking at Big Branch Boardwalk
Driving back to Bloomington.
Flying to San Francisco
Lunch AND dinner with 30 Something.
I also started another writing class. Our first assignment was to write some haiku and then embed those into a flash fiction. So here's my entry. I hope you'll read it if you feel like it.
Swamp Tour in Slidell
by Lee Heffernan
Guy with tattoos
brings a bag of hot cheetohs
on the swamp tour
out on the bayou
raccoon snatched that crayfish up
wet wood dinner plate
marshmallows on sticks
alligators snack and pose
wildlife photographers
marshmallow bribery
other captains throw hot dogs
how'd this get started?
spinning swallowtail kite
Captain Colin slows the boat
Blue heron guards the dock
Sheila paid her twenty-five dollars, cash only, and boarded Captain Colin's swamp tour boat. She sat next to a man with tattoo sleeves holding a bag of hot cheetohs. Sheila had not thought to bring food along.
The boat zipped down the Pearl River past the shack houses and the grand mansions. A woman reeling in a writhing catfish. At a turn in the river, the boat slowed and drifted down into the narrowing bayou. When Captain Colin stopped the boat, two raccoons appeared. They walked out onto the roots of the gum tree and Captain Colin tossed marshmallows, which made Sheila a bit uneasy. The closest raccoon ignored the marshmallows, and snatched a crawfish up from the murky water. The crawfish fought valiantly, but in the end the raccoon pulled it apart limb from limb.
On the way back to the wideness of the Pearl, Captain Colin hoped to lure Big Bruce, largest bull gator in the bayou out to the boat. Big Bruce was a no-show, but smaller alligators snapped up the marshmallows he held out on a skinny branch. So many alligators came to snack that Sheila successfully captured a series of phenomenal photos with her phone. "I'll crop the marshmallows out later," she thought. She wondered if she should mention the marshmallows in her insta caption.
On the way back, she asked Captain Colin about the bird spinning above and he slowed the boat for all to see the swallow tail kite. A new bird for Sheila's list. A heron stood on the dock at the tour's end, welcoming them back. A true lagniappe, the heron flew past Sheila, skimming the water. She had gotten her money's worth, so she tipped Captain Colin ten dollars before heading to the parking lot.
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