An ode to Louisiana's nuisance creatures
If you ask the right person, everything is a nuisance.
A few weekends ago, we took a trip out to St. Bernard Parish to dig for flowers on the side of the road. We’re slowly replacing chunks of our lawn with native Louisiana plants — tough little guys like Black-eyed Susans, Spiderlilies, Fortnight lillies, native sages, and goldenrod.
At one stop-off, we spotted these structures:
After doing some swoopy what-is-this phone lookups, I discovered crawfish — creatures we’ve been enthusiastically snacking on in places like Markey’s, Pepp’s and Parleaux Beer Lab for the past few months — built them. Crawfish castles were a revelation to me, but when I posted a pic to social media, I got some hand flaps and comments to the effect of “Oh yeah, those things.”
Crawfish castles (or chimneys, or towers, or mounds, whatever you want to call them) exist in Missouri, but somehow I’d never seen one. Maybe because St. Louis crawfish swim in the pond in Tower Grove Park and eat hot dogs.
But since they’re new to me, I went down the research hole: Louisiana has 39 different species of crawfish, including the red swamp crawfish and the white river crawfish, the two guys you see on platters with sausage and potatoes and eye-wateringly spicy corn. Their wild cousins include five species exclusive to Louisiana, including the delightfully named Teche painted crawfish, the Calcasieu painted crawfish, the Ouachita fencing crawfish, the Caddo chimney crawfish, and the Calcasieu creek crawfish.
The best-known local myth is the incredible shrinking lobster story of the Acadians, but as this short history piece in New Orleans Magazine points out, that’s pretty contemporary compared to crawfish origin stories from local tribes, including the Houma, who ate crawfish long before Cajuns invented the boil:
In their cosmogony, the Chitimacha recognize a Creator, Thoumé Kéné Kimté Cacounche or the Great Spirit. In the beginning, he placed the land under water, fish being the first animals. In order to have the land rise above the water, he ordered the crawfish get to the bottom of the sea and bring back to the surface. With this emerged land mass, he formed human beings and installed them in Natchez, their first home. This story has some parallels with Genesis, but it is important to note that among the local tribes, crawfish, this delicacy which occupies much of the culinary year in Louisiana, plays a decisive role in the creation of the world and mankind. The importance of crawfish for the original peoples in Louisiana cannot be overstated. The tribes of the Houma, whose totem it is, and the Chakchiuma, assimilated by other groups, were created by separating from an older tribe. They derived their names from their traditional language, a variation of Choctaw, part of the Western Muskogean family of languages. Chakchiuma means “red crawfish” quite simply. Houma is the word for red, as we see in Istrouma, red stick, or Oklahoma, red people.
The largest cache of stuff the search engines coughed up, though, was about pest control. Mounds of Fury, a one-sheeter from Texas A&M Ag Department, has this to say: “Crawfish mounds are more ‘ugly’ than damaging to turf. Mounds can, however, dull mower blades. In turn, dull blades open grasses to disease pathogens and reduce the appearance of the lawn. While crawfish burrowing can lead to improved drainage and help aerate soil, they are a nuisance. There are no pesticides labeled to control crawfish. Putting any toxic chemical directly down a crawfish hole is not recommended due to the potential for contaminating groundwater.”
The second-to-last sentence makes no sense to me. Also, people don’t listen to that last bit of advice. I found directions for killing them by pouring lye, bleach, or whatever acrid chemical you can get you hands on right down their chimneys. Mounds of Fury indeed.
Formosan Subterranean Termite Blues
Speaking of Mounds of Fury, it’s termite swarming season in New Orleans. Last week, we heard a very entertaining account of a recentish New Orleans resident experiencing her first NOLA termite swarm while making salsa, which, of course, turned into termite salsa. We haven’t eaten any termites we’re aware of, though we did have a modest termite mound at the edge of our driveway, which was obliterated by LaJeunie’s Pest Control; after they spayed, there was a disturbance in the termite field, and they fluttered up out of the drains for a few days and then finally gave up the ghost.
So, you can’t let termites chew on your window frames (or eat the floorboards right out from under your feet), but reading stories about people pouring lye down crawfish chimneys moved me to look up termites in an attempt to swivel out of only thinking of them as a nuisance to be sprayed, and find out why they are a good thing. Turns out it’s the same reason they’re a bad thing: they’re good at eating wood. Which may serve a really important role as the climate grows hotter and drier. They can break down rotting organic matter without a lot of moisture; unicelluar creatures can’t.
Concidentally, as I was doing mad research on termites, New York Times decided that the coronation was the perfect opportunity to write aboout them because are the only insect colonies that have both kings and queens. “Although [termites] don’t have a castle” — (like crawfish) — “they do have a special royal cell with a little chamber that’s primarily for the queen and king” that keeps them safe from anteaters.
But not from chemical fogs. As the Times-Picayune reported this week, 11 years after launching the military-stounding “Operation Full Stop” the swarms are, well, not swarming so robustly anymore in the French Quarter. Also, fun fact: mid-May is peak swarm season. Happy Mother’s Day!
Cajun Chorus Frogs, down by the tracks
This is only the second time frogs have popped up on Historiola!, even though Louisiana claims to be frog capital of the world (just like it’s the crawfish and termite capitals of the world).
Thanks to the constant rain this month, giant puddles formed alongside the train tracks that cross St. Claude. At night, if you park your car alongside them, you can hear multiple kinds of frogs chattering and singing at night. I’ve been going through these clips to try to ID the frogs, but I haven’t quite figured it out yet. Here’s a clip from Tuesday night. Maybe you’re more clever with frog vocalizations than I am?
Turns out that people find frog chatter as annoying as crawfish castles. Florida, as it turns out, is the actual frog capital of the world, and their noises drive people so far to the edge that the state has multiple companies that specialize in “frog removal.” People here eat them of course, but not fast enough put the frog removal experts out of business.
Very large, abundant and noisy frogs are a plot device in this 1971 eco-horror gem, which stars Sam Elliot, Joan Van Ark and Ray Milland (thanks to Thomas for tippin’ me off to this beaut!):
Spoiler alert: Ray Milland is the only cast member to actually die by frogs. But perhaps the frogs were the military masterminds deploying snakes, spiders, and the crafty lizards who knocked poison off a greenhouse shelf to asphyxiate a human? In any case, it’s a sub-B movie with an interesting conceit: what if we are the apex nuisance species? The West Baton Rouge city government maintains a list of nuisiance species, which includes, in no particlar order: bears, alligators, honey bees, wasps, hornets, raccoons, bats, possums, squirrels, moles, snakes, armadillos, mice, skunks, otters, foxes, rabbits, coyotes, beavers, nutria, bobcats, minks, snakes, feral hogs, “birds” and “mammals.” That last category may very well include us.
A Gator Postscript
Thomas and I recently met up with fellow New Orleanian/writer Boyce Upholt via a mutual friend (the Mississippi River expert Dean Klinkenberg). Boyce writes southlands, “a field guide to living amid Southern nature,” which I’ve been digging. I’m crash-coursing on Louisiana plants and animals, including gators. Last week’s post on nuisance gators was spectacular.
Rather than drop in Part Four: Gators!, I’ll point you in Boyce’s direction — because the only thing I know about gators is that they like marshmallows.
Did you ever see the movie Cane Toad? If you never see another movie…
I'm gonna be honest, I had absolutely no idea that Crawfish made castles. That being said, it's also not all that surprising given how many other creatures do similar things. Then again, my experience with crawfish is rather limited. I do recall being a little girl and going somewhere for a day trip, only to find them in a creek. I've never eaten one though. As someone who loves the weird insectoid world below us, this is the kind of stuff I am most fascinated by. I love how they all have their own individual ecosystems. I know Crawfish aren't necessarily "insects" but screw it haha
Great job as always! Was really looking forward to seeing a post this week and got slightly perturbed when one didn't show up on Wednesday, so glad to see you're alright!