So I’m sure everyone is waiting for me to write about the Anthony Bourdain visit.

It will happen but after I can wrap my head around that it actually did happen. I still feel like it was all a dream. He ate my food y’all! Like right in front of me! How the hell did that even happen?! So until I can get over the shock I’ll talk about a part of the reason he was here.

Le Courir de Mardi Gras, is the Cajun's traditional Mardi Gras. Instead of watching floats catching throws we get on horses and beg for ingredients for a communal gumbo to be made at the end of the day. (Crazy right? Click here for more info.) A big part of the courir is the chicken chase. Just imagine a bunch of people in colorful costumes made of rags sometimes in very disturbing masks running around a field chasing a chicken and you get a mental image. In the more traditional runs like the one in Mamou a lot of chickens don’t make it through ( sorry PETA it’s just what happens). This year a lot of the crew with Bourdain were disturbed by this. Since the Mardi Gras run I go on is a kindler, gentler run (they even let women participate -imagine that) a lot of our chickens live to see another day though they always are caught. But this year, by the end of Mardi Gras day I had a great story to help the crew heal from watching the other Mardi Gras run - The time the chicken won.

It was the last stop of the Mardi Gras run. By this point, everyone is pretty pie-eyed from drinking all day though I’m part of a small group that isn’t three sheets to the wind. The chicken chase was happening behind an old barn and I decided to stand back from the crowd for this one. I’m standing on the road, not looking at anything in particular, then all of a sudden I see this chicken about 40 feet away jut out from behind the barn and into the field next door. He stops, looks up and towards him come running a throng of rag-clad people. He starts to run toward the road when, I kid you not, a giant rabbit comes hopping across the field directly in the path of the crazed chicken chasers. It’s like the world stopped. They all froze. A little confused by this new animal. Like they were wondering if the game had been changed and it was now rabbit chasing time. The chicken seeing his opportunity high tails it under a travel trailer. The runners follow and all go diving under this trailer. All you see is a bunch of legs sticking out from under this trailer. Then out pops this chicken head. He looks around assessing his situation and darts out leaving his half immobilized chasers behind to scramble out from their self-inflicted confines. The chicken darts across the field heading straight for the neighbor's field where there is a giant bull standing watching all the action. She leaps through the fence and stands next to the bull facing her oppressors. The runners all stop just staring at this chicken that’s staring at them. I swear if a chicken had arms it would have crossed them and said: “What are you going to do now?” And then she would flip them the middle finger. The last thing I saw the chicken do was a bird version of the middle finger, it slowly stepped closer to the bull and then turned around again and stared right at chicken chasers. I’m not sure what happened after that but I’m hoping the rabbit, bull, and chicken all met later and discussed those idiots that fell for their plan to make a bunch of humans run around a field covered in mud chasing a chicken only to get the big ole FU from them. Yes, I know this means I also believe they conspired before. Let me have this, sometimes you just have to believe the scrawny chicken wins even when it’s being chased by a gang of brightly colored monsters. Haven’t we all felt like that chicken at least once in our life?

Jolie Meaux