Southern Louisiana is largely bayou. When you think of a bayou or swamp, what do you picture? Maybe it’s dirty water with gnarly looming trees and a low film of fog. Or shallow muck that creeps onto the shoreline. Well, maybe these aren’t that far off from reality, but it’s far more beautiful than your imagination. There are wildflowers blooming across the vast marshland, lilypads and aquatic grasses decorating the surface of the water, and bountiful wildlife in the waters and the sky.
This landscape is well worth immersing yourself in, and one of the best ways is to take an airboat swamp tour. There’s also a kayak swamp tour which sounds amazing, but we didn’t do it this time around. We headed just outside the city to the rural area on the river bank to get an up-close experience of the bayous.
Our tour guide, Kody, was the best we could ask for. He was funny in a sarcastic way, informative and clearly confident in what he was able to do when it came to the alligators. Yep. The alligators. That was our primary reason for wanting to go on this tour, the close encounters with the wildlife.
After a brief safety talk, Kody started up the boat and zoomed us into the swamp. And I mean zoomed! Those airboats go way faster than you’d think by just looking at them, and the fans are LOUD. At first, he offered headphones and only a couple people took them. After he drove for a minute he stopped and handed them out to the rest of us when he noticed everyone covering their ears.
It didn’t take long for us to spot our first alligator in the marsh, but Kody seemed to have a destination in mind. He took us further into the bayou to a little cove where a mama gator was standing guard of her nest. He pointed out one of the little baby gators which was probably only 6-8 inches long, a brand new baby. Mama wasn’t thrilled that we were there, especially since we were attracting larger gators.
Since this swamp land is privately owned, the tour guides get to know the gators pretty well, and vice versa. A lot of the gators have gotten used to tour guides feeding them marshmallows in the early season and chicken during the warm season, so when they see the boats they approach them with the expectation of being fed. Kody liked to refer to these gators as “on the payroll”.
Personally, I still don’t think this is a smart practice. Humans should never feed wildlife, especially animals like alligators. As we saw on the tour, the alligators would come all the way up to the boat, sometimes even climbing up on the deck. Of course, this is wanted in a tour setting, but imagine being a recreational boater or kayaker with a very acclimated alligator. That gator might try to hop up on the kayak expecting a reward. It’s never a good idea to feed wildlife. Anyway, moving on.
We watched the mama gator fend off some curious males as they got too close to the nest. In case you didn’t know, young alligators are often eaten by other alligators. This is how alpha male alligators protect their territory, they don’t want another gator to grow bigger than them and take over as the alpha male. Luckily, this round, mama was able to fend them off.
Kody showed us a couple more gators, including the two biggest alligators they have on the property: Stormy and Pyscho. We saw at least a dozen alligators, if not multiple dozens. If your goal is to see a gator in Louisiana, a swamp tour is your best bet.
But we didn’t just see alligators. We saw so many birds like ducks and heron, there were fish jumping out of the water and I even got a personal visit from a friendly dragonfly. And a not so friendly bird left a little present for me on the top of my head.
Towards the end of the tour, Kody surprised us with a special visitor. One-eyed Willie, the baby alligator! Apparantly he was born with one eye, hopefully that’s the truth and not something PG they tell their guests. Either way, he was super calm and a total sweetheart. He wasn’t very squirmy, so we got to handle him too! Honestly, after handling our pet snakes, holding a little alligator was a breeze. But maybe you’re wondering why we were able to hold a baby allligator.
The tour company we went out with, New Orleans Airboat Tours, LLC, does conservation work as well. Not only do they raise alligators for release, they also revegetate their habitat by planting cypress trees!
The American Alligator was first added to the Endangered Species list in 1967, but has sincebeen removed thanks to conservation efforts. Kody and the other employees actively search for alligator nests during baby season so they can gather the eggs. These nests are massive mounds of dirt with 20-50 eggs buried in them. The nest is guarded by the mother, so it takes two people for the collection process: one to safely collect the eggs, and one to occupy mama.
Kody said he prefers to keep mama occupied. Harvesting the eggs is a very sensitive process because the eggs need to remain in the same position as when they were laid, if the baby gator shifts in the egg, it could drown. So Kody distracts the mama gator by running in a big circle. Alligators have a hard time turning, so chasing someone in a circular motion is a slow chase. And thats good, because collecting the eggs takes a long time.
Once the eggs are collected, they bring them back to the farm where they raise the alligators for the first couple years. Most baby alligators don’t make it to adulthood, in fact (according to National Geographic), only about 1% survive to be adults. Harvesting these eggs and raising them to a proper size gives these gators a fighting chance once released back to the wild.
So, that was really neat to hear about the conservation work they were doing on the site. I’m glad to at least have supported an alligator conservation site whilst enjoying the tourism aspect of the business. I highly recommend taking a swamp tour if you’re planning on visiting Louisiana. And if you’ve ever taken the kayak swamp tour, leave a comment and let me know what you thought of it! 🙂
Bonus: they had chickens on site too (probably to feed the alligators), but this little guy had a big personality!
kpctravels.com 