There’s one thing that occurs to you once you’ve spent sufficient evenings on the bayou. The cypress knees forged lengthy shadows throughout the bayou because the solar units, and that’s when the previous tales begin to floor in your thoughts – none greater than the legend of the Rougarou.
Rising up fishing and searching in Southeast LA, I discovered concerning the Rougarou on the identical time I discovered how you can bait a hook. It was initially known as the “loup-garou,” which implies werewolf, however over time, the identify morphed into what it’s recognized as we speak because the Rougarou.
The unique French legend served sensible functions. Catholic communities would warn that breaking Lenten obligations for seven consecutive years would remodel an individual right into a loup-garou. Mother and father discovered the creature significantly helpful for encouraging correct habits in kids—very similar to how my father would level to rustling cypress branches on frogging journeys and whisper, “Hear that? That’s the Rougarou coming for you.”
Bodily Description and Alleged Habits
The creature is alleged to face impressively tall, with most accounts placing it at seven-plus ft. Tales from the Atchafalaya Basin describe it as a shadowlike creature with a disproportionately small head.
The Rougarou’s coat runs darkish – usually black as fresh-poured espresso or typically a deep rusty coloration like oxidized marsh mud. Its eyes maintain a selected terror – glowing yellow or blood crimson within the darkness, reflecting again your boat mild from not possible distances throughout the water.
Habitat
In case you’re seeking to encounter the Rougarou (although I can’t suggest looking for one out), you’ll must enterprise into Louisiana’s extra remoted swamps. I’d advise having a look at Google Earth to map out sections of the swamp which are secluded with no roads or homes close by. The creature appears most at residence within the deeper reaches of our swamplands, significantly the place historic cypress bushes create these eerie cathedral-like areas.
Probably the most constant sightings come from Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes, particularly within the distant sections of Mandalay Nationwide Wildlife Refuge, the place the channels slender and the Spanish moss hangs so thick it will possibly block your working lights.
Honey Island Swamp alongside the Mississippi-Louisiana border carries maybe essentially the most well-known affiliation with the beast. For the reason that Nineteen Sixties, hunters working the japanese edges of the swamp have reported encounters that they describe as unusual eyes reflecting again from not possible heights within the bushes.
Searching the Rougarou
Having spent sufficient pre-dawn hours in duck blinds when one thing unexplainable moved by way of distant palmetto bushes, I’ve given this query critical consideration.
When searching the Rougarou, you want a dependable handgun with substantial stopping energy – one thing like a .44 Magnum revolver or a 10mm auto-loader. The creature’s reported pace and dimension demand rapid incapacitation.
My Cousin Jimmy, who claims an in depth encounter close to Laffitte Swamp again in ’88, swears by his stainless Ruger Redhawk loaded with heavy hole factors. However bear in mind, this isn’t like deer searching. It’s extra similar to searching a velociraptor.
How Would I Put together It?
One lesson that has been handed down for hundreds of years in Louisiana is the previous saying, “In case you kill it, you eat it.” And this goes for Rougarou as effectively. The few sightings which have been recorded recommend that the meat can be darkish, with a purple tinge and an uncommon metallic undertone – not not like the style that lingers once you’ve reduce your lip.
Preparation includes a three-day brining in closely salted water adopted by a sluggish simmer with triple the same old cayenne pepper – the warmth supposedly essential to “burn out the curse.”
So, whereas I might theoretically inform you a couple of black iron pot preparation with andouille, trinity, and filé powder, my suggestion is to let the Rougarou preserve to the deep swamp, and preserve to extra conventional proteins.
Latest Sightings
Probably the most compelling Rougarou encounter I’ve heard lately got here from a crabber who runs traps in Barataria Bay.
He had been working his traps at nightfall. The fog rolled in thick. He was pulling his ultimate entice when he observed one thing unnatural concerning the shoreline silhouette. “At first I assumed it was only a huge bull gator,” he stated. “However gators don’t stand upright on their again legs. And so they certain don’t have eyes that catch your Q-beam like two burning cigarettes.”
The creature reportedly watched him for practically twenty minutes, monitoring alongside the shoreline because the fisherman struggled together with his outboard motor. Then it howled. the crabber stated “it was like somebody attempting to yell underwater.” The petrified man deserted his ultimate entice and didn’t return till broad daylight the next morning.
Fantasy or Monster?
I’ve spent extra mornings than I can rely watching the mist rise off the bayou. In all these years, I’ve by no means laid eyes on the Rougarou.
The rational a part of me has to conclude that the Rougarou probably exists extra in our collective creativeness than within the bodily world. Like the right fishing gap, it appears to seem in tales extra usually than in documented actuality.
So, whereas I can’t in good conscience inform you the Rougarou prowls the swampland, I additionally gained’t be the one to enterprise alone into sure distant stretches after sundown. Some issues don’t must be examined.
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