Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana: Late Spring Visit

Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana

Poo-yai! Those are some blood-thirsty yellow flies at the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge! I first experienced these varmints when I visited the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge in July 2014 here and here.

Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana

On this year's visit, my group of visitors and I saw an alligator, a turtle nest, various engrossing (hahaha! "Engrossing," get it?) carcasses, many examples of poop, and birds. And the yellow flies.

Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana

A slideshow here:

Louisiana: Sabine Wildlife Refuge

Wetland Walk, Sabine Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana

Do you know that when you're walking on a trail where there is tall grass between you and the water channel, so you can't see the water, that when you hear a sound like a glub-into-water right next to you, and it makes you jump a little bit, that you don't know if it's an alligator ker-plopping into the water from the bank, or a boat drifting by with fishermen, with water slapping against its side?

Wetland Walk, Sabine Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana

Louisiana's so flat that you have to build a rise.

Wetland Walk, Sabine Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana

 Once you walk up that long, long plank to the raised deck, you feel a cool, restorative breeze. Then, when you walk back down the plank, you descend into the heavy, heated air of sea level (or, in the case of Louisiana, perhaps below sea level - sad laugh).

Wetland Walk, Sabine Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana

Louisiana: Watch Out for the Stobor

At the end of the Blue Goose Trail, Sabine Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana

In Robert Heinlein's sci-fi classic, Tunnel in the Sky, the professor warns the survival-class students: Watch out for the stobor.

The students assumed the terrible stobor were large, fierce beasts such as lions or dragons. So the students chose their survival gear with these threats in mind. Little did the students know that the stobor were actually .... well, I don't want to ruin it for you.

I had feral pigs and alligators in mind when I packed gear for my tiny foray to the Sabine Wildlife Refuge south of Hackberry, Louisiana. I had a long stick and I had my knife.

But neither pigs nor alligators were the stobor. .... the stobor were the dratted flies that plagued my face, hat, and neck! Thank God I brought my bandana! And now I know to invest in more earplugs because all I thought about as I swatted and swore like a crazed woman was that my ears were exposed.