Within four days after Katrina I was able to get into Lafreniere Park to check on the birds and waterfowl in the Bird Sanctuary.
The Park was being set up by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers as a dumping grounds for tree debris and it was full of campers, dump trucks and heavy machinery.
The Park was in fairly good shape with a lot of the smaller trees uprooted and the Bradford Pears snapped in half. Otherwise, a few days' work could have made it safe again for the public to use in an otherwise area of chaos.
You can see in this photo how bewildered the ducks are. The geese and swans were no different. They had survived a catastrophic hurricane and all the people they were accustomed to seeing each day could no longer enter the Park. I only had two sacks of cracked corn to feed them this day but I knew they would at least survive until I could return.
Many of the egrets, herons and ibises that normally roost in the trees over the water at night were dead and hanging from the branches. The hurricane struck at night and they were trapped in a place they thought was safe. Heartbreaking.