US: The mud boat skirts down the bayou past trapped dogs, ruined hunting cabins and capsized shrimp boats, carrying Alcide "Joe" Boudwin back to his flooded trailer.
The state troopers have set up a roadblock to stop residents from returning to the low-lying areas of Terrebonne parish that Hurricane Rita flooded on Saturday.
But they can't block off the bayou. So Boudwin (56) his granddaughter Tiffany (15) and his son-in-law Junior (45) keep an eye out for alligators and cottonmouth snakes as the flat- bottomed boat noses around the bridge and past the flooded sugar cane fields.
All the way to 4894 Shrimper's Row, to see what 9 feet of salt water from the Gulf of Mexico has done to their home.
Three dogs bound out of a rust-streaked trailer and swim across the yard, tails wagging above the water. The bearded Boudwin's Old Testament features light up with joy as he sloshes out to meet them.
But his spirits sink as he looks around his property.
"Look at my lawn-mower, it was brand new," he says, waving his hand toward a sunken riding mower. "How'm I going to cut the grass now?" Out back of the rust-streaked trailer, Junior shouts: "Look at where the washing machine's at!"
The Boudwins are the type of family whose most valuable items are the ones they keep outside. Now the washing machine, the Soloflex strength trainer and a toilet and sink sit under several feet of water. The shrimp boat out front has cracked its hull when it drifted off its trailer.
Wooden framing shows where the front deck used to be before it washed away. Only the swimsuit top and the cutoff jeans on the clothesline are dry.
"We had $5,000 sunk into that sucker," Junior says, pointing to a mammoth boat engine.
Junior and his wife used to live in a nice double-wide trailer in a development up the road, but his earnings from shrimping and construction work weren't enough to keep up with the payments.
So Joe built them a shack out of corrugated metal behind his trailer. Like other houses in Cajun country, the shack sits on pilings several feet off the ground, but that wasn't enough to keep the water out this time.
The bed is soaked, the freezer has tipped over, the computer is ruined and the floors are covered with mud. Junior fills a plastic laundry basket with soggy pants and T-shirts, throws an unopened package of athletic socks on top. He'll need clothes for work tomorrow.
Beyond the Soloflex, Joe's trailer reeks of damp upholstery and wet dog. The front window is broken and the entire structure has twisted like a beer can. The aluminium siding has peeled up and the interior walls are cracked. "My trailer's buckled. I don't know what they're going to do and I don't have a drop of insurance, bro," says Joe, who used to own a bar and work as a shrimper before a series of heart attacks.
"We don't get but $800 per month. I can't tell you what's my next step." A helicopter flies overhead, south toward Dulac where they say the houses are still under water. Joe looks skyward as it passes, arms out, palms up. "We don't got no kind of money. No kind of nothing," he says. "Come on, let's go." - (Reuters)