Baja St. Martin

I’m hearing that crawfish are being caught almost everywhere. In the swamps, spillway and the marshes below Morgan City. The price remains at $1 a pound the latest I heard.
The water in the river has fallen maybe an inch or two. The spillway level seems to have gone down many feet but when you’re calculating the distance on level ground it’s kind of hard to tell. Suffice it to say that only one boat launch at the Belle River landing is really easily used. The raised approach makes launching and landing pretty easy. The other two ramps are still pretty hard to find since they’re under water but every time I go there I see a few more people using the flooded ones regardless. As long as you sort of judge where the launch ramp is, you’re OK.
The crawfish buying stands along Hwy. 70 going into Pierre Part are all busy but I don’t see piles of full sacks often. Maybe they’re just being more careful about keeping the crawfish cool quickly.
The landing is not exactly a pretty place these days, although the Atchafalaya Basin Levee Board (ABLD) is grading it regularly and cleaning up some of the debris. It’s just hard to keep up, I imagine, with the water rising and falling. Sometimes there are bloated dead fish stuck in the shallow water. Once it was a dead animal. And of course, mounds of driftwood.
The weather, at least, has been gorgeous. Mild temperatures, sunny skies, no rain (knock on wood). I have two hummingbirds at the one feeder by my back window. The purple martins and their buddies, the wrens, are busily nesting. I’ve seen two wood ducks at my box by the seawall. They are very secretive birds, but I’ve caught them exiting the box a few times.
I spent a recent Saturday at a friend’s house in New Orleans. Two friends and I drove there and joined a bunch of others in celebration of our mutual friend’s 60th birthday, retirement and marriage. She has a lovely tri-plex in the Lower Garden District. We enjoyed boiled crawfish with all the trimmings – corn, mushrooms, potatoes. It was a nice event.
I talked to my baby sister this morning and she said it snowed yesterday and as we spoke it was sleeting. She hates it. Her great Pyrnees dog loves it. Speaking of dogs, mine is at the vet right now recovering from surgery in which she was spayed. She was so excited at riding in the car, seeing other dogs, going someplace different, so when I handed her over to a technician I felt like a horrible, evil person. She had no idea what was going to happen! I felt a little better when the vet’s office called to say she had come through surgery just fine. My aging cat spent the whole day sitting by the sliding back door. Maybe enjoying not having the dog pestering her or maybe just missing her pal! I know I do.
Things are pretty calm at the school this month, although iLEAP and LEAP testing takes place the last month of April for 3rd through 8th graders. I’m sure the teachers are busily prepping for the emotional stress along with the actual testing. It was so many years ago when I was in grade school I don’t remember how the teachers determined our grades but there was no such thing as state testing that I can recall. Subject tests yes. Somehow we managed to learn, graduate and get on with our lives without all this mass testing. At least not until high school. I think we’re testing our kids to death these days.

Teche News’ Lower St. Martin correspondent, Linda Cooke, can be e-mailed at lindacooke1939@gmail.com.