Looking for gators

If you’re looking for fun on the bayou, the Tri-parishes has a number of colorful swamp tours to choose from.

Jimmy Bonvillian, owner and operator of Annie Miller’s Son’s Swamp and Marsh Tours in Houma, which runs two-and-a-half hour cruises through the Mandalay National Wildlife Refuge in Terrebonne Parish.

“We get more foreigners and volunteer workers working on homes than anything,” he said of his tours.

Atchafalaya Basin Backwater Tours owner Jon Faslun said business his tour, which lasts three hours, explores several bayous in the Gibson area, and leaves at 10:30 a.m. daily.

Faslun said he promotes his business by placing “brochures in hotels in Houma, Thibodaux, and Morgan City.”

Though he advertises his ecotour business in a modest way, Faslun promotes his operation more strongly in person.

“I’m the oldest, smallest, most educational” swamp tour, he said.

“I started the swamp tour business” in south Louisiana in 1976,” he said.

“Alligator” Annie Miller, Jimmy Bonvillian’s mother, is more often credited with starting the swamp tour industry in Louisiana. Miller was a local naturalist and snake hunter who began giving swamp tours at the behest of the Terrebonne Chamber of Commerce, according to a Tri-Parish Times article in June 2006.

Bill Munson, owner of Munson’s Swamp Tours in Schriever, said, “Annie Miller founded the swamp tour industry. Annie caught snakes. She showed the swamps and the wildlife to her friends. The Tourist Commission got hold of her, and had her start doing swamp tours.”

Faslun contends, however, that he “put Annie Miller in business.”

She was geared toward running busloads of 40-50 people,” he said. “My boat holds four people.”

The Backwater Tour “is a real swamp tour,” he said. “It’s not entertaining. It’s an educational trip.”

John Verret, owner of Airboat Charters in Bayou Dularge, started out conducting fishing expeditions seven years ago, but has since expanded into offering airboat swamp tours for $50 a person.

Torres Swamp Tours, co-owned by Merlin Torres, has conducted cruises through the Bayou Boeuf area for 22 years. Merlin’s husband Roland Torres, the other owner, directs the swamp tours.

“Roland’s been a Cajun all his life,” she said. “He’s lived off the land all his life. He does an excellent job.”

In contrast to the Atchafalaya Basin Backwater Tour, the Houma-based A Cajun Man’s Swamp Cruise, tries to be entertaining.

Cajun Man has been conducting tours of the Atchafalaya Basin since 1989.

Owner Black Guidry said, “I do jokes, funny things to entertain. I don’t tell ‘Boudreaux’ jokes. I just interject.”

During the cruise, “I pretend to be out of gas,” Guidry said. “Then I break out the guitar and do ‘Jolie Blonde.’

“I pretend to be lost,” he said. “I tell the children, They’ll never find us! They say, ‘Oh Mommy!’ I say, I was just kidding.”

Guidry was noted for taking a catahoula hound (the Louisiana state dog) named Gatorbait along with him on his boat for his swamp cruises.

“Having a swamp tour, I wanted the state dog on board,” he said.

“She used to sing with me when I played the accordion-you know how dogs do,” he said.

Guidry and Gatorbait were featured in a KIA Motors television commercial, which aired in Canada. “She was with me singing,” Guidry said.

Sadly, Gatorbait died three or four years ago, he said.

“She had cancer,” he said. “They did three operations, but she was too full of cancer.”

Gatorbait was probably a mix, Guidry said. “She looked weird. She had one blue eye, and one brown eye.”

Although the KIA Motors commercial helped attract Canadians to his swamp cruise, Guidry has experienced a decrease in customers from outside the U.S.

Foreigners make up 18 to 20 percent of his business, but “it’s not what it used to be since 9/11,” he said. “I get them from Belgium and France, especially. I can speak French and Cajun French. I intertwine the two languages.”

While Terrebonne Parish is home to eight commercial swamp tour operations, St. Mary Parish has only one: Cajun Jack’s Swamp Tour, which has been in existence for 20 years.

Why is Cajun Jack the sole swamp tour operator in St. Mary Parish?

“I am the competition,” joked owner/operator Jack Hebert. “I’m a licensed captain,” Hebert said. “My boat passes Coast Guard inspection.”

He said that while other operators conduct eight-to-10 mile swamp cruises, Hebert directs two-and-a-half hour, 40-mile round trips through the Atchafalaya Basin.

He said his swamp cruise boat has amenities. “I got a special-made boat with a Port-O-Potty,” he said.

Looking for gators