Slidell, LA, just East of New Orleans, is where you’ll find Dr. Paul Wagner’s Honey Island Swamp Tours, Inc., at Crawford Landing on the West Pearl River. The tour is very popular because they have a bus pick-up for New Orleans tourists, so be sure to make reservations. In a modern, metal, open tourboat with about 20 people aboard and a blue cover overhead, we got a great first-hand view of the low-country bayous, which is the Indian term for water paths through the swamp. Swamp waters rise and fall, but bayous are always navigable because they are actually old river tributaries.
Soon after embarking we entered a bayou and several tourists asked, “Will we see any alligators?” Then, almost as if answering a prompt, we rounded a bend and there was the most gigantic alligator any of us had ever seen. It was out of the water, just basking in the sun, and we certainly did not want to awaken him. (I’ll refer to him as male; however, you can only determine an alligator’s sex by feeling inside its pouch where the genitals are hidden. For obvious reasons, no one knows until after it’s dead whether a ‘gator is male or female!) He was so perfect I thought at first it was a plastic prop, but then he moved.
He was about 14 feet long and about 1,000 lbs.,about 15 years old. We learned that when you see a ‘gator’s head above water you can fairly accurately guess his size: for each inch between nose and eyes, he is a foot long from head to tail. Alligators grow a foot in length each year. We were lucky to see this giant specimen because the next tour boat behind us arrived just in time to see him slither into the water and hide.
Our guide, Paul Trahan, is an authentic Cajun with eyes like an eagle. He found creatures at every turn and pointed them out to us. Sometimes our untrained eyes couldn’t readily find the well-camouflaged native inhabitants, which included several snakes, many turtles of different varieties, and several more alligators, many birds, and fish and crawfish/crayfish. Paul grew up on these swamps and has led these tours three times a day for nearly a dozen years. He knows this swamp! He was very good about the botanical information also, pointing out the huge old cypress trees with their knobby knees sticking out of the water and the big tupelo gum trees which attract thousands of bees, hence the name Honey Island Swamp.
Among the other animals who inhabit the swamp and are mainly nocturnal are the raccoons, bobcats, nutria ( which were imported from South America to eat the water hyacinths, which double their biomass every 7 days! The hyacinths can ruin the water, but now the nutria are ruining the swamp.) Paul pointed out swollen buttresses where termites live and then feed the woodpeckers. We stopped to check his trap and found it full of huge crawfish, which are the bottom of the entire food chain of the swamp. A trap will collect about 10 pounds of crawfish in a day.
Spanish moss, an aerophyte which does not hurt the trees which host it, was draped eerily everywhere adding to the mystique of the swamp’s appearance. Daytime tours are not bothered by mosquitoes, but if you choose a full moon swamp tour which other companies offer, mosquito repellent is a must. “Deep Woods” kind is what the locals use. They use Avon’s Skin So Soft for little no-see-ums (tiny gnats), but we saw no insects at this midday tour.
We welcomed a brief rain shower as we sped along our return on the West Pearl River, seeing the week-end fishing shacks owners from the city enjoy. When we landed we took Paul’s advice and had a `gator dog at the snack shop. It is a spicy sausage made from local alligators and is delicious!! The alligator laws are very strictly enforced, and hunting them is highly regulated. ‘Gator heads you see for sale in shops are from alligator farms where the animals are grown strictly for meat and hides, and the heads are bi-products for commercial use. Fishing in the rivers and swamps is excellent but also requires a license. Six-hundred and fifty acres of this Honey Island Swamp are protected by Nature Conservancy. For reservations call (985) 641-1769
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