Cameron Parish Asks the Cold Front to Sign a Hunting License Before It May Bring Ducks

Wildlife clerks say the forecast 38-degree morning will not count unless it completes the Harvest Information Program and brings its own water.

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has been asked to deputize this week's cold front as a licensed hunter after south Louisiana duck camps decided the weather was the only thing in Cameron Parish still willing to show up with birds, and even the weather was told it would have to complete the Harvest Information Program before anyone would let it into the marsh. West Zone regular season opens November 14 for the first segment of a 60-day season, the East Zone follows on November 21, and the forecast of a 38-degree morning has been received in the blinds as if a glacier had filed a flight plan, despite the larger problem that an extra-dry October has left the fields, the ponds, and several miles of marsh with the water content of a stale cracker. A clerk sent to count teal, gadwalls, and lingering ducks reported enough birds for a worthwhile trip and not nearly enough water for them to stand in, at which point the camp declared the drought a trespasser and began issuing the cold front a basic hunting license, a state waterfowl stamp, and a federal stamp on the theory that a 38-degree morning is old enough to pay like everybody else. Under the new marsh bylaws, shooting hours remain half an hour before sunrise to sunset, the daily duck limit remains six, and any front that arrives without rain will be written up for empty ponds and then told to stand in the blind filling out the wildlife-management pamphlet until the water shows up. Hunters north toward Iowa and Eunice have already formed a bucket brigade of paperwork, the oldest blind in the parish has been promoted to a dry-dock admiralty, and Wildlife and Fisheries is rumored to be considering a temporary season on humidity, with a daily bag of one cloud and a possession limit of three, provided the cloud signs the form and does not pretend to be a pintail.

This is satire from The Cypress Knee.