Hey, y’all, it’s Gaynell Bourgeois, Maggie Crozat’s friend! I’m super excited because it’s almost Mardi Gras and I get to be a capitaine at the Pelican Courir de Mardi Gras.

Okay, that’s a whole lotta words you probably don’t understand. Here in Cajun Country, we don’t celebrate Mardi Gras with big, fancy balls like they do in New Orleans. Instead we have a Mardi Gras Run. People dress in wild, handmade costumes and masks, and go from house to house trying to make the homeowners give us the ingredients for a communal gumbo.

They walk, ride horses, ride flatbed trucks. The Mardi Gras – yup, here in Cajun Country, Mardi Gras is also a proper noun – beg, sing, and play pranks to try and get chickens and veggies and all the good stuff that goes into a gumbo. There’s a lot of drinking and carousing, and somebody’s got to keep these Mardi Gras in line. This year, that’s me, the capitaine! At least for the woman’s Courir. The Courirs used to be all men, but we gals didn’t take to that, so we started our own run. But we all meet up and become one giant group when it’s time for that yummy vat of gumbo.

Masks, booze, and partying – not much that can go wrong there, huh? Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Wait… what happened to Maggie? And why is that horse with two people on it galloping so fast – in the opposite direction from the Courir?