Bayou-Diversity

Does your magnolia tree in the front yard have feelings?  How about the Better Boy tomato plants that you pinched the suckers from yesterday?  In order to evoke feelings it is necessary to capture some sort of stimuli from our surroundings, and for that to happen we need sensory receptors.

Though mates for life, for much of the year they sleep on opposite sides of our house in the woods.  One we call the east wren.  This is the male.  The west wren is the female that sometimes roosts above the front door or in a wind chime that she often rings on a dead calm evening seemingly for her own amusement.

Louisiana's bayous and rivers have long been considered blessings and banes, depending on one's preferred mode of transportation.  In a land laced with aquatic arteries, streams were the only practical means of conveyance for centuries.  Only when colonial authorities began planning a system of roads to facilitate European settlement and economic development did the waterways become appreciated as substantial barriers to progress.

Swamps sleep naked and are slow to awaken.  Long after green-up in the uplands, deep overflow swamps that sustain Louisiana bayous and rivers remain quiescent, prolonging winter dormancy until the threat of natural spring flooding has past.

It can't be spoken in soft words for there is no other way to put it.  Whether you are for it or against it, the recent sea change in American politics has led to an all-out assault on this country's long-held environmental policies and laws.  Barring effective pushback, a future of drastic change seems certain for our biotic natural resources.

Always in late February when the first white crawfish reached two inches in length, a ritual began in the D'Arbonne Swamp that included my father, his cousin, and me, an adolescent youth in those years a half century ago.  The object of the tradition was to procure "smallmouth bass" for the deep, black skillet.

Since the founding of America, attitudes toward nature have changed and they continue to do so.  Early pioneers maintained a European mind-set, considering nature an entity to be conquered, civilized and rid of competing wild beasts as necessary.  The theory of manifest destiny reflected a theological belief that settlers were divinely appointed to "use" the earth for the enhancement of civilization, no holds barred.  Such attitudes eventually led to the decimation of Native Americans and the extinction or near extinction of several animals.

They were thought of as noisy mobs of rogues hell-bent on destruction.  They swarmed the grain fields and orchards of European settlers consuming the fruits of hard labor.  If they possessed redeeming qualities it was only after they were dead and skinned, either for decoration on women's hats or fried in lard for the table.  Linnaeus named them Carolina parakeets in 1758, and within that group there was a subspecies with slightly different colored plumage called the Louisiana parakeet.

That an old, time-marred box turtle in my hand today could be the same one held by my great grandfather on the edge of this swamp a hundred years ago infers a connection mystical if not spiritual.  Though unlikely, it is possible.

Nothing can brighten a gray winter day faster than a splash of crimson cardinals or goldfinches gathered at a window side bird feeder.  The popularity of bird feeding continues to grow, and a recent report estimates that 63 million Americans provide food for wild birds, spending more than $2.5 billion on birdseed and feeding supplies each year.