Article: Squirrel Town, U.S.A. The biggest day of the year in Ville Platte, Louisiana, is the ecureuil (translation: squirrel) opener. Businesses shutter their windows, schools close, football games get rescheduled, and the entire town heads for the woods.

Byline: T. Edward Nickens

The old man waited for me at the end of the dock, where he'd been pulling sac-au-lait--crappies--from the brown waters of Bayou Lafourche. My hunched shoulders tipped him off. "No ecureuil?" he asked, in the clipped tones of old Cajun French. He was incredulous. This 89-year-old Louisiana papa, with white hair and eyes the color of Spanish moss, had never heard of such a thing. "No ecureuil," I said, hanging my head. No squirrel.

For 24 hours this kind man and four generations of his family had treated me like one of their own. They fed me stewed catfish and smoked Cajun sausage and fried sac-au-lait. They filled me with wild ...

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