Our jeep is stationary and I’m marvelling at the scenery when I feel someone nuzzling my back very gently. Turning slowly I find myself eye to eye with an adult zebra whose broad smile displays a set of large, yellow teeth. His message is clear: “Corn, please, ma’am!”
This being the Global Wildlife Centre in Folsom, Louisiana, the zebra knows only too well that private jeep tours like ours are well stocked with one of his favourite treats — dried corn. I fill my plastic cup and pour corn directly into his gaping mouth, watching as my new friend guzzles the food in seconds.
The largest free-roaming wildlife park in the country, the Global Wildlife Centre’s 900 acres are filled with 30 species of very tame herbivores and omnivores from all over the world. There are Somalian giraffe, Chinese Father David deer, South American rhea birds, African eland and zebra, Australian kangaroos, Indian black buck and at least 1,000 fallow deer.
The animals scamper toward the jeeps and wagon tours for food handouts and their proximity allows close encounters. Some animals feed directly out of our hands and others open their mouths gratefully as my daughter Sarah and I pour food inside.
We’d crossed the 24-mile (39-kilometre) Causeway from New Orleans to St. Tammamy Parish a few days earlier, intent on exploring Louisiana’s North Shore. With Lake Pontchartrain behind us we quickly learned that the nine communities that comprise the parish offer the warm friendliness of the south coupled with a great selection of outdoor, family friendly attractions — from giraffes to swamp monsters and beady-eyed alligators.
We started out on the still waters of Cane Bayou in Lacombe, paddling past trees heavy with Spanish moss and turtles sunning lazily on upturned logs. With Fontainebleu State Park on one side of the bayou and a national wildlife refuge on the other, this is a landscape untouched by time, one as perfect today as it was 150 years ago. I had bare feet drifting overboard the kayak when our guide, Shannon Villemarette, owner of Bayou Adventure, pointed out a statuesque 10-foot alligator a few yards away.
“Best to put your feet back in the boat,” she said.
I followed her advice, thinking there seemed little point attracting reptilian attention in a place this remote.
Later that day, though, Captain John was determined to do just that. Our guide on the Honey Island Swamp had attached a white marshmallow to the end of a stick and was dangling it off the end of our boat. Within seconds we were in the company of an alligator — a small one, but a reptile whose larger relatives weren’t far away.
“They think these are turtle eggs,” explained the Captain of the Pearl River Eco-Tour excursion.
The two-hour tour takes us deep into the swamp and we putter gently through some of its narrow channels, examining the plant life. Bald cypress trees point their skinny knees out of the water while Spanish moss hangs like thick, ghostly white hair from their branches. The Captain pulls closer to the bank to peer at unusually large tracks in the mud.
“I have no idea who or what made these prints,” he says, shaking his head. “I’ve also been out here at night and heard sounds I can’t identify. I’m not saying it’s the swamp monster. I’m just saying, I don’t know.”
Later, hungry for a meal, we were directed to a nearby bistro, the funky, colourful eatery called Liz’s Where Y’at Diner. We snuck into one of the bright blue booths, ordered a late breakfast and watched a cheerful scene unfold as proprietor Liz Munson greeted us and other diners with her signature welcome of conversation, warm smiles and genuine warmth.
“That’s my grandmother’s recipe for grits,” she said, looking at my plate of the house special, Where Y’at Bennies. “But people don’t just come here for the food. They come because they get taken care of here… because they can feel the love.”
Munson, a bundle of joyful energy who waited tables for 16 years before opening her diner, flits from table to table, touching each of her patrons with the personal warmth that has made her eatery a popular fixture the past five years.
“We specialize in turning peoples’ day around here, because this is a place they feel warm and relaxed,” she says candidly. “You come as strangers, but you leave as friends,” she says, giving us a warm embrace when it’s time to go.
True to her words, we can’t help hoping we’ll be back.
Travel Writers’ Tales is an independent travel article syndicate.
