Neaux fear from the cold

A lot of people are talking about the weather and with good reason. 

Cold temperatures such as we don’t tend to see here took hold in the early part of the week, and while the wind chills in Cocodrie or Bayou Boeuf don’t approach those of Minnesota, they are certainly worthy of remark.

But certainly not panic.

The alligators are not panicked. They just get deeper down in the mud, waiting until the air temperature rises above the temperature of the water, so that they can sun themselves for a little bit of food before hiding from winter’s chill again. 

“It’s not like a bear goes into hibernation, it’s a state of dormancy,” explains Edward “Black” Guidry, proprietor of A Cajun Man’s Swamp Tour on Bayou Black. “They’re buried in the mud like that. They are smart. They won’t feed right now. They’ll just control their body temperature in the mud. “

On Monday morning, when the mercury began its downward slide, Black did not have an option of being dormant.  So as the January sun climbed higher into the morning sky, Black was wrapping the faucets outside of his house, just to keep the cold wind off. There were also oranges to pick, on the one tree he has that is so generous with the fruit. 

The cold does not make Black panic, or complain, because to him it is just one more turn of nature and like all things of nature. In his 72 years on the planet, Black has seen a lot of cycles turn. Most of them before the Weather Channel and the OMG cold is a-comin’ pronouncements that make it feel colder than it already is. If anything, nature has been cutting breaks in Black’s book.

“I can recall many years ago when we have had ice, ice in the horse troughs and cow troughs, lately it hasn’t happened that much,” he said. “Every now and then, Mother Nature will send us a deep freeze to clear out the plants and in one respect that is good as long as it doesn’t come too late in the spring.”

It’s all about the invisible clocks, like the ones ticking inside the heads of the alligators and inside of Black’s, too. 

“The eagles have a clock that tells them when to leave,” he said. “When it’s like this you don’t hear the locusts, you don’t hear the cicadas.”

They have clocks, too, which tell them when to be silent.

The best thing about the cold, in Black’s estimation, is the chance that plants that make navigation difficult for boatmen – plants that aren’t native to the Bayou Country – might have a decent kill-off.

“It is possible that it would deter them,” Black said. “The hyacinth makes it impossible for people to go to their camps and do their fishing. They try to get the government to do it. But a good freeze, a good hard freeze, will lock back stuff like that.”

And with that Black is off to more chores related to coping with the curtain of cold, because other clocks are ticking as well.