Heading out of Raceland after Monday & Tuesday’s thunderstorms, Miss Claudette Pitre, who hosted me at her bed & breakfast in Raceland, called ahead to arrange a place for me to spend the night in Des Allemands. Immersed for years within the local tourism trade, she has many contacts in the area, gave some “swamp people” friends of hers a call: Arthur & Kathy, owners of Arthur’s Airboat Tours. They gave me the green light, I headed in from Raceland, and they let me spend the night in a comfortable travel trailer they keep on the side of their house. Though their evening airboat tours generally run in the $60-per-person range, they gifted me a spot on one of their powerful wind-driven watercrafts. Chad, the pilot/tour guide, showed us all around the local swamp, introducing us to local bullfrogs, nutria (20-lb swamp rat), herons, bald eagles, and gators of all ages, including babies and aggressive mamas. One of the most on-edge interesting moments came when Chad slowed the airboat next to an enormous, thousand-pound alligator, “Big Al,” the king of his territory. Big Al is just now coming out of hibernation, and is therefore easy to handle, Chad assured.
Yes, this pic is for real. Yes, this is a gator in the middle of a Louisiana swamp.
“We won’t get this close to Big Al in the summer,” Chad tells me…
(Connected narrative from Facebook photo narrative; photos soon to reach photos page of enjoythewalk.org:)
Through no other option than to simply have jumped off into the swamp far earlier, Chad, the airboat pilot, had built up built up quite a degree of faith and trust amongst his five passengers. He started the tour by steering us at high speed into docks and trees, only to shift the airboat at the last moment and narrowly miss by inches, and making it obvious that he knew exactly what he was doing in this lifelong profession of his. He proved himself evermore by powering us through grass, mud & small trees, up and over levees, gravel roads, and logs. When he pulled up and stopped next to Big Al, I was the closest human to Big Al– about three feet from Al’s monster jaws. Gators can jump 2/3 their length, and given that Al is ten feet long, I would have made a quick & easy catch. At minimum as a fear repression approach, I basically had no other choice but to place full faith into Captain Chad. Chad then told us the “Big Al” story. They’ve been visiting “Big Al” for years, since he was a much smaller gator, and Big Al has grown used to them. They don’t feel threatened at all, but they also know their boundaries. (They’re lifelong, master gator readers.) They won’t approach Big Al in the summer, and of half a dozen or so territorial gators of similar size in the surrounding swamp, Big Al is the only one who’s tolerant and “accustomed” with their visits this time of year, as he’s emerging from hibernation. Chad played with him, and then another female passenger held his tail before I did– and by that time I felt confident enough that Big Al wasn’t a threat. That said, Big Al shifted and started moving again when my hands got a hold of his tail. The reason you still see me there is because he wasn’t moving toward me!
Airboat Captain Chad