David Michel was preparing to go shrimping when he saw the oil coming at dawn Thursday as he stood on his dock in Caminada Pass just west of Grand Isle.
It started with isolated floating brown clumps that soon gave way to thick bands of oil that coated the shoreline.
"Up until now, the currents had been keeping the oil away from us," Michel said. "But you know your luck has run out when you basically have oil in your front yard."
A month to the day after an April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sent oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the first oil washed ashore Thursday in populated areas from Port Fourchon to the western edge of Grand Isle.
"It's not sheen. It's not tar balls. It's thick, nasty oil," Jefferson Parish Councilman Tom Capella said. "It's like when you were a kid and stuck your finger in the brownie mix."
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Perhaps the hardest-hit area Thursday was Elmer's Island, a wildlife refuge west of Grand Isle that has long been a popular spot for bird-watching and beach camping.
Hundreds of oil-coated hermit crabs lay dead or dying along the blackened shoreline, having lost their battle to crawl out of the toxic mess
There's more:
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/a_month_after_explosion_oil_fr.htmlThe enemy is overrunning the lines. Casualties mounting by the minute. This will be 'the longest war.'