Lots of Alligators

Ok, to make up for our swamp trip having like, .10 of one alligator, here are a bunch of 'em.

 This one is both exceptionally old and exceptionally fat. He only had about half his teeth--he is around 85.

 The white alligators are my favorite! The Audubon zoo has two, and the New Orleans Aquarium has one. Most white zoo alligators are from the same nest, which means if you've seen one in, say, San Francisco or Boston, it's the sibling of these here. They are not albino, but leucistic ("loosistic"), like white tigers. They have blue eyes.

 Did you know gators scratch their itchy heads with their back feet, like puppies? Well, they do. This gator was very interactive and interested in us. The other one just slept.

 You can ride a gator at the carousel, except it was out of order. This is a great carousel, though. If this was a real gator its tail would be half its body length (see above). I think alligators are fascinating--they're like... swamp dragons. They also had some foot-long hatchlings, but I didn't get pictures for some reason. They were cute.

Trip to the Zoo

 This cool Angkor Wat-style building is from the 1920s-- a lot of the buildings are much newer, but there are a few holdovers.

 The carousel was very photogenic. Aren't they always?

 This is an orangutan READING A MAGAZINE. He was totally reading it, like methodically flipping through and looking at everything. I think someone may have tossed it in there.

And a disgruntled pelican. There are a lot of ponds and water birds.

My mom and I went to the Audubon Zoo on a beautiful, sunny day just before Halloween. It's a lovely zoo, one of the best in the country. Alas, it closes at 4, so we didn't quite get to see everything.

Salt Marshes

 Above and Below: At the end of the trail, the swamp opens up into salt marshes. (Swamps have trees, marshes only have grass, according to the rangers.) There's a nice overlook platform here where we hung out for a while. Next time I will bring a picnic lunch.

 Spanish moss at the boundary between swamp and marsh.

Below: These fluffy things were blowing everywhere, which was very lovely. I swallowed one by mistake!

This baby raccoon totally posed for us. Then it ate some grubs from the top of the tree and climbed down. I didn't get any pictures of the water moccasin we almost stepped on, because really, that was careless, but chasing a poisonous snake for  pictures is seriously dumb, and I didn't have a zoom lens. It was beautiful though. Like a rattler, but shiny black.
We went on the 1.5 mile Bayou Coquille trail, but there's a 4-mile trail as well; I'd like to walk that one another day. If you go, bring lots of water, sunscreen, and bug repellent. (Avon Skin-So-Soft bath oil is like super mosquito Kryptonite, so totally I recommend that.) And don't feed the alligators. As the sign at the ranger's station hilariously and accurately says, "Alligators cannot tell the difference between a HANDOUT and a HAND."

Let's play Spot the Alligator

 Above: There is an alligator in this picture. Can you see him? He kind of just looks like a truck tire tossed into the bushes. Actually, someone told us that it's hatching season, so there were baby gators around, but they were all hiding from the herons.

 

A fairy path into the swamp.

 Spanish moss. I thought there was a lot in New Orleans, but there's a ton out here.

Doesn't this look like a Berkeley garden spider? She was huge, and some others we saw were even bigger. We took these from the boardwalk that goes through the swampy bits. It's the dry season, though, so things weren't as squishy as we expected.

Proceed to the Swamp

 Above: Spanish moss in the bald cypress and swamp tupelo trees.
Below: These pink flowers were everywhere.

A cute fat swamp bee. They'll kind of buzz your head, but they aren't aggressive.

My mom is visiting, and yesterday we drove out to the Jean Lafitte Barataria Bay Preserve, about 40 minutes outside of New Orleans. ("Proceed to the swamp" was what Mom wrote on our dry-erase board in the morning.) It was totally cool! And it was free, too. But when they say "Watch out for poisonous snakes" they're not kidding--on the way out, we almost stepped on a fat water moccasin that was hanging out right beside the path. Which really made us rethink the times earlier in the day we snuck off the trail to take pictures. Nature is fangy down here.

Magazine Street, and a rainstorm

 Above: A house on Magazine Street, uptown.
 Below: Also uptown. This tree is huge! That's my Honda under it, looking like a toy.

 Same Spanish oak, with breaker boxes for outdoor lights mounted on it--I think that's what they are, anyway. It's illegal to cut down a Spanish oak in Louisiana, but this is OK, apparently.

 The Circle Food Store on Claiborne Avenue. It's been closed since Katrina. Claiborne Ave was the center of a thriving African-American business district until I-10 was installed on top of it in the 1960s. Now this stretch of Claiborne is pretty bleak--it runs under the freeway for miles.

A summer thunderstorm, with Mardi Gras beads.

A hibiscus flower I found in the street. They start blooming in the fall. They don't last long, but they sure are pretty; I see them in red, orange, pink, and white.

Red Riding Hood--some thoughts

And now for something completely different: another product of my ongoing Little Red Riding Hood obsession/fetish. I never get tired of this imagery. First I made the sexy red lace cloak, and then I paired it with a very virginal, delicate white muslin dress.

Speaking of Red, I've run across some interesting interpretations of her recently. I've been playing a  "short horror game' called The Path, by indie company Tale of Tales. It's not like a typical computer game at all--it's haunting, atmospheric, and intuitive. It feels "feminine" in an archtypal way. I played through it fairly quickly, but I find myself returning to it for artistic inspiration. You can get your own copy of The Path for $10 from Tale of Tales: click here

I enjoyed the film that came out this spring--mostly for the costumes and set design, which were gorgeous. The script and general Twilight-knockoff-iness of the story didn't impress me, but I did think it was quite feminist for a pop-culture film, and I dug that.

There's also a cool intersecting-vignette horror film called Trick or Treat that has a clever riff on Red--I recommend it if you like R-rated scary movies. It also features a cool witch character--always a plus for me. Netflix has it on demand.

And of course, no discussion of Red Riding Hood is complete without mention of Freeway, the creepy/genius movie starring a very young (pre-America's Sweetheart, that's for sure) Reese Witherspoon.This movie is pulpy, sad, funny, and very screwed up--one of my favorite films (a list which also includes Aliens and Death Proof). Approach with caution.

What is it that's so compelling about Little Red Riding Hood? For me, it's partly that she's a normal girl. The other well-known fairy tales (Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel) all end with a marriage. Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Snow White are famously beautiful, and they are, or become, princesses, over weeks, months, years. Red is a charming child, but she's no one special, and her story happens in a single day. Her variable fate also sets the story apart. There's no folk version of Snow White where the Wicked Queen wins. But Red is variously devoured, rescued, or able to escape through her own cunning. In one early version, she runs away, naked, after telling the wolf she has to pee. That's never going on a Disney lunchbox.

Of course, there's the Freudian interpretation--latent sexuality, fear of men, blah blah blah. But is the story really about that? When is a wolf just a wolf?