Louisianans ponder the unthinkable: Life without crawfish

~ Salt left by Hurricane Rita and a drought have cut production by 70 percent.

FORKED ISLAND, La. -- Cajun rancher Charles Broussard needs a favor from the good Lord: Oodles of rain to wash away the salt Hurricane Rita deposited in his crawfish and rice ponds, ruining them.

Broussard is not alone after Rita pushed the Gulf of Mexico more than 17 miles inland, inundating 6,000 acres of crawfish and about 140,000 acres of rice, the Louisiana State University AgCenter says.

A drought has worsened matters because the salt left behind isn't being flushed out. Broussard says it might take years for production to get swinging again.

Their plight has Louisianans facing the unthinkable: life without crawfish. Already, fewer crawfish boils lace the air of parks and church yards this year with the smell of mudbugs stewing in cayenne pepper and paprika.

"I'm praying for rain just like Patton prayed for sun in the Battle of the Bulge," said Broussard, 81.

He flips out a pocket-sized calendar. He's recorded yearly rainfall averages, and on the opposite page a list of Louisiana governors.

Politics and rain. That pretty much sums up this Cajun heartland, a savanna-like territory west of Louisiana's swamps.

Broussard and his fellow large landowning ranchers belong to an unusual class of cowboys. He's Roman Catholic, spoke French to the farmhands in the old days and traces his roots to the 1700s when Acadians showed up and bred cattle. Later came rice, crawfish and gator crops.

These ranchers also supply the bulk of the state's crawfish, and they're hurting. So far, the harvest is down by about 70 percent.

"The best way of getting rid of the salt is what Mother Nature can do for us. And that's rainfall," said Steve Linscombe, a rice breeding expert. "We didn't have a record dry winter, but it's been below average."

Prices are in overdrive and some restaurants are skimping on crawfish offerings because Chinese imports are sometimes the only thing on the market.

Faced with the shortage, people are digging out crawfish tails (the meaty parts) squirreled away in freezers. Thankfully, crawfish etouffee and crawfish bisque are still on the table in many places.

"We love crawfish round here," Dean Stelly, a grandmother in Abbeville, said. "They're delicious and you can cook them so many ways. If you want to have a good party, have a crawfish boil."

Stelly remembers how it was before crawfish were farmed in large-scale operations. The family threw burlap sacks over their backs and hit the highway to catch the critters scurrying over the blacktop from one swamp to the next.

Crawfish grow in rice fields, or paddies, and make a second crop. Good years bring in $50 million for the farmers.

But the countryside all the way to the Texas border is awfully quiet this year. Usually in February and March, workers are hard at it, hoisting traps dripping with crawfish into their boats. Instead, the fields are brown, and biologists and agricultural specialists are pondering how to get the salt out.

And not much relief will come from another source of crawfish: the Atchafalaya Basin swamps.

"There's no season at all," said fisherman Greg Guirard. "It's very quiet."

The problem isn't salt, but the drought. You need plenty of water in the basin to crawfish, and the river levels are too low, Guirard said.

He said crawfishermen are making up the difference with bowfin fish (the eggs are called "Cajun caviar," he said) and alligator skins.

"Crawfishing in the Atchafalaya is like the last refuge of true Cajuns," he said. "All other aspects of the Cajun lifestyle have been copied and exported."

But don't despair, crawfish lover.

"The typical consumer shouldn't give up on the crawfish boil this year," said Greg Lutz, an aquaculture specialist. "They might just have to wait a bit longer."