Early Birth

Before I left for my vacation we took Jane's visitor to a swamp tour venture nearby in Laplace. These swamp tours are popular with tourists and can be very entertaining, though it is sooooo hot in the swamp during the summer. I mention this tour because we had a bit of added and unscheduled drama while on yesterday's tour. The tour guide was bitten, gashed actually on the hand by a gator who grabbed for a piece of chicken the guide was feeding it.
It was quite a lesson in the power of a gator's jaw, as the man's hand was a bloody mess after he withdrew it from the teeth of the reptile. Fortunately this gator (he had lured it from the water on shore) was smaller one with less powerful teeth. Seemingly impervious to the pain, the guide got back on the boat washed the wound and wrapped a towel around it to stop the bleeding. It seemed to work well enough for him to finish the last 45 minutes of the tour, though I suspect he received at least some stitched after disembarking at the end of the tour.
So deserted is my area after Hurricane Katrina it took me two days to find any swamp tour that was disembarking. I called 3 others and none had enough patrons to venture out, Ours had but 10 people yesterday, and in pre hurricane days this time of the year the total on board would have been closer to 50. And only two of the 10 on our boat yesterday were tourists.
Mom is getting younger all the time. The other day a nine-year-old gave birth to a baby girl in Brazil's western Amazon jungle, a pregnancy that was the youngest on record and may have been the result of rape, authorities in Brazil said. "There is no registry of any other Indian girl getting pregnant at such a young age," said Luiza Mello, spokes-woman for the National Health Foundation, which has been responsible for Indian health since 1999.
The girl was found in the jungle in April by laborers working on a natural gas pipeline. She was taken to a local hospital and stayed there for for three months with malaria, pneumonia and anemia. Mom went into labor and after a C section, out popped a baby weighing 2.2 kilograms. Baby Mom and her baby are both reported to be in good health. How did a 9 year old become pregnant.
A hospital spokesperson said, "In some cultures it's natural for girls to have sexual relations after their first menstruation, but now we on-going to war over religion." With this weird age situation, maybe mother and child (Or perhaps "child and child") will have to figure out who belches whom?