I inherited a little bit of Cajun blood from my grandmother, evident mostly in the spice I put in my food and the short fuse on my temper. I can’t stop tapping my feet when I hear some Zydeco, and I could listen to someone with a Cajun French accent talk for hours.

So you could imagine that I was thrilled Saturday evening to head over to Lake Charles with my family to eat some seriously spicy crawfish at a fun little place called Steamboat Bill’s.

Monkey was equally thrilled when MawMaw gave him his first french fry. (See how smug she is, having finally been granted permission to give my kid junk food? Grandmas. Sheesh.)

The mudbugs were good, but the impromptu alligator show afterward was truly thrilling. Cajuns are tough as nails, survivors in every sense of the word, but I think they also might be a little bit crazy.