Billiot and Nacio. No joke.

So Billiot and Nacio were in a boat together not too far from Bayou Lafourche and there was this alligator.

No, this is not the start of a Boudreaux joke.

It is the start of an adventure two men, one from Pointe-aux-Chenes, the other from Larose, had this past week, on the next-to-last day of the alligator hunt.

And it is about the alligator no longer being such an endangered species, because it appears the state did some things right, including its development of the alligator hunting program.

But Billiot and Nacio, now there is a different story.

You know, the Boudreaux jokes have been around for so long, and our people here are so removed from their roots, that it is easy to descend into self-deprecating humor about seeingly slow-witted folks who are countrified and bumpkinized.

But the joke is on you if you believe it.

So back to Billiot and Nacio.

Edward Billiot is 77-years-old and is from Pointe-aux-Chenes. Albert Nacio is 81-years-old and he is from Larose, and Larose is where the two set out in a little motorboat Monday, to check the bait they left out for the alligators, because the season was almost over.

They traveled the little cuts and oilfield canals and back bayous that lie away from the main artery that is Bayou Lafourche, and there was this alligator down in the water, the taut line indicating that it had swallowed what would be its last meal.

With the grace and stamina of a man 60 years his junior Nacio, with the help of Billiot, heaved the live and thrashing gator up alongside the boat, hanging on to it by a leg because if it got shot and went down it would be really tough to get it up.

So up came the gator and out came the .22-caliber rifle and there was the kill shot, right between the eyes like it’s supposed to be, and the gator got hauled all the way in and when they measured it both men were amazed.

The alligators are nowhere near as big as they used to be, but this one was about 11-feet long, which makes it a monster.

“We were lucky today that it was not too hot out,” Nacio said of the 93-degree temperature with the 110-degree heat index. “There was a little bit of a breeze. We got him. We shot him right before he was in the boat.”

The alligator, along with the others taken on Monday, got dumped in the pickup and it was off to Al Marmande’s dock in Dularge, where the big gator was boxed and iced for shipment to wherever it goes.

Then Nacio and Billiot were off, without time for so much as a picture to be taken, because they would be getting up early the next day for alligators to be taken with their last six tags.

What you need to know about all this is that the Nacios and the Billiots of Louisiana are the endangered species. Men who wrestle these alligators with their bare hands, who when they do this work think there is nothing special to it, who speak to each other in the musical patois that is Cajun French, which is also endangered.

They are endangered because they are getting old and nobody speaks the language anymore.

Nacio understands and appreciate this.

“The old people used to talk French,” he says. “But a lot of them passed away.”

Likely the one thing that will not take Nacio from this earth is a gator, because it hasn’t happened yet.

“Nope,” he said. “I never got hurt. One hit my hand with his tail but I never got bit by no alligator.”

Feel sorry for the gator?

Nacio doesn’t.

“They had problems there in Larose,” he said. “Too many alligators in too many places. Allgiators was eating dogs.”

Nacio would much rather feel sorry for the dogs.

Who we need to feel sorry for, really, is all of us. Because in a generation or two there won’t be guys like Nacio and Billiot to talk with, to listen to, who can speak the French and kill the gators and not think anything about it but how necessary it is to keep us from getting overrun.

Because in a generation or two there will be no more people to remember what it was like when life was so hard as when these guys grew up, before the television and the Nintendo and the X-Box, and all the things that keep the kids busy inside when they should be learning to hunt gators outside.

Feel sorry for us because we are losing these treasures on a daily basis as the ones who built the heritage pass on.

But feel glad because Nacio fully intends to be around next alligator season. And with the determination he exhibits each year there is no reason to doubt that he will be.