Monday, I drove to Mississippi to give my talk, which was reasonably well received. It was dark by the time I got home, so I went to bed. But the next morning I was up bright and early and back at the canals. I saw an amazing assortment of snow egrets, cattle egrets, little blue herons, great white herons, American coots, white ibises, and some strange black duck with red wattles on its bill that I still haven't identified.
Then I went out to Lake Pontchatrain near Bucktown and West End, and there were pelicans everywhere! If you counted by weight, there was probably as much pelican as sea gull! Pelicans were sitting on posts in the lake with the sea gulls. They were flying up and down the lake front. There was even one particularly unafraid of humans who was landing on the piers at the end of Bonnabel Boulevard. In one day I saw more pelicans, than I'd ever imagined I'd see in my lifetime!
There are still some fanatics who oppose environmental laws, and think the whole DDT scare was invented by tree-hugging, hippie, commie, pinko faggots who just wanted to screw over hard working American businesses who simply needed a place to dump a few harmless, non-toxic waste products. (If you doubt me, check out the reviews of Silent Spring on amazon.com some time.) But I know different. I was born shortly after the publication of Silent Spring, at the absolute nadir of the American environment. I was born when when Lousisana's state bird was extinct within the state, and I grew up in possibly the most polluted state in the Union. And I know that Louisiana used to be a hell of a lot dirtier, more polluted, smellier and just generally more disgusting than it is today. Lord knows Louisiana still isn't as clean as it should be. There's a reason the billboards on I-10 between Baton Rouge and New Orleans warn of "Bhopal on the Bayou". But Louisiana is in much better shape today than it was thirty, twenty, ten, or even five years ago; and the biggest reason for that is enforcement of environmental laws.
The pelicans have returned to Louisiana, and I for one am glad.