Baja St. Martin

I’m beginning to sound a bit like Paul Revere. “The martins are coming! The martin’s are coming!” Indeed, the martins are now here! Or at least the scouts are here. I just love the sound they make. So happy, and busy and cheerful. Now I’ll start waiting for the wood ducks to move into their box by the seawall.
I just looked at my school calendars and realized that Assumption schools will have the entire Mardi Gras week off but St. Martin schools will be closed only Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I’ll be gone that entire week anyway, so it won’t affect me. I wish I could get some pictures of the SES Mardi Gras parade but hopefully the school will take some.
My husband and I bought a few pounds of boiled crawfish for a Sunday snack and they were so good. Getting a little bit larger, though not big. I assume these are pond crawfish but don’t know for sure. The spillway water level is down and the north wind today won’t help matters. Perhaps the snow up north will provide some melt water for us, but I think it takes a lot of snow to make even an inch of water.
Last week I went with the Pierre Part 8th graders to plant saplings for the LSU Coastal Roots program. The kids planted 750 Nuttall oaks, cypress, mulberry, and pecans along the Intercoastal levee below Morgan City. I partnered with Thomas Blanchard, whose daughter Pam is the director of the program at LSU. He used the dibble to dig holes and I plunked in the little trees.
Thomas is the man who has made, put out and monitors almost 70 wood duck boxes in the Atchafalaya basin. I went out with him once in a friend’s party barge and Thomas opens the door of each box, checks for unhatched eggs, snakes, babies and keeps a count of everything in a notebook he has kept for years. He makes the boxes out of a hollowed piece of cypress with wood shake roof and a little ramp inside so the babies can get up to the hole to jump out. He does all this just because he likes to. Doesn’t get a penny from anyone.
I hope you won’t forget the Feb. 26 public hearing here in the Belle River fire station at 6 p.m. Some of us will speak, some will just listen. Where FAS might get electricity for their transfer site if they get a permit is a question I have. Also, where would they get potable water?
I think there should be quite a crowd. We can use your support in whatever way you can offer. The parish can use your support. I think one of our main goals, those of us who are opposing the permit, is to make sure as few people as possible can say, “Oh, I didn’t know anything about that!” Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on the matter but they should at least know what is going on.
Meanwhile, I’m ready for my trip north. A sister and a niece both have emailed to tell me the temperatures in my hometown will be in the low single digits so bring super heavy duty wear. I replied that I have nothing “super heavy duty” at all but felt I’d be OK as long as they didn’t make me walk home from the airport.
It will be fun to see the snow. My last two visits have been in the spring or summer but I do have a wonderful picture of myself and my youngest granddaughter, who is now 21, making a snowman outside my sister’s house.

Teche News’ Lower St. Martin correspondent, Linda Cooke, can be emailed at lcooke9417@bellsouth.net.