Bluebonnet Swamp

BLUEBONNET SWAMP is a swamp in miniature. Sixty, seventy acres of cypress and tupelo set aside within the city. Baton Rouge drains into the swamp, and the swamp seeps into the earth.

A trail leads from the nature center into the low, wet hardwoods, gives way to a boardwalk that skirts the refuge and dead-ends at the library. Here an office park borders the swamp. At night raccoons scale the hog-wire fence separating the two worlds; they thieve and plunder trash.