Grand Isle, LA resident Betty Doud told the Examiner that it seems like she's finding even more dead creatures washing up on the shore, not less.
Doud has been carefully documenting the carnage on her daily walks along the Gulf shore and uploading them on Facebook. She says for this, some critics have chastised: "Don't listen to any of those people on Facebook!" But Doud knows her hard work including dozens of pictures and heart-wrenching descriptions are having an impact.
On a regular basis, the carnage -- and that is the only way to approximate a definition -- is staggering. Headless birds, pieces of rodents, unidentified wings, tails, limbs. Where does it end?
Doud says she sees dead nutria - a large semi-aquatic rodent also called the coypu -- all the time, as well as pelicans and other creatures. In addition, she's finding more and more tar balls it seems, and the dispersant today was actually colorful. "There was no sun out but I could see rainbow colors. One of the women I spoke to, a biologist at LSU, said she thought it was remnants of the oil that was in the dispersant that hadn't been evaporated."
She says the tar balls alone are so bad that she's been forced to change her ways.
"I never used to wear shoes on the beach and now I will not go on this beach without shoes. You don’t know if you are walking through tar or Corexit," Doud says. "Some days I might not see many [tar balls] but see, we are surrounded by a plate of oil at Elmer's Island. And no one knows what will happen when that Gulf warms."
"I know it shifts out in April; May is always the big boom season. That’s why we got it [the oil and dispersants] first instead of Florida – that is why I’m surprised we are still getting so much. The dispersant is an everyday thing. They [BP and their ilk] say 'sea foam, sea foam,' but NO, I am sorry! Sea foam dissipates pretty quickly but this stuff floats, goes out, comes in, and it is a milky looking brownish color and bubbles up. It sticks to your feet.”
Doud says that she is concerned once the current shifts in April, things could get even worse. "I am definitely seeing more different types of dead animals," she says with a sigh.
"I live here because I love being near the water," she says, without any hint in her voice of ever leaving.
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For more information on Doud's work, please key in Betty Doud in the search engine on Facebook.
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