The season is about to change in south Louisiana from strawberry to hurricane.

Fresh, locally-grown strawberries are usually available in Pontchatoula from November through early May. I hope to buy yet another flat (12 pints) when I pass through this weekend. It will probably be my last chance as rising temperatures end the season. Lately they’ve dropped to $10 a flat. We buy them, eat them whole, washed but unsugared until we regard them as common.

The end of strawberry season comes as the beginning of hurricane season on June 1 nears. Usually, nothing really significant to the Gulf coast happens until August. Dr. Robert Gray of the Colorado State University, citing cooler seas and a weak El Nino, recently reduced the number of hurricanes he predicts this year. We’ll see.

Across Laurel Street from our house, workers have started adding tall, backstop fencing behind home plate to complete the transformation of Wisner Playground back into the ball field it once was before Katrina.

The last time I was home on a Saturday morning, dads and boys came for baseball practice. They followed the dog owners who bring their canines for romping in the open, fenced space. Amazingly, they still haven’t clashed over dog mess on the playing field. That means the dog owners are picking up after their animals.

After Katrina, Wisner Playground was turned into a FEMA trailer park for people who had lost their homes to the storm. That view is still available on the street level photo view on Google Maps. Type in 4859 Laurel St., New Orleans and you can get a street level view of our house. Rotate the cursor and you can still see the FEMA trailers across the street from a view that must have been photographed in the summer of 2007.

You won’t find any damncats in the photo, but they are there. Were then, are now. So I was unconcerned when I read about a strain of superats in England and on the European continent that have grown resistant to most rat poisons. On our block of Laurel Street in New Orleans and at Annie-Glenn’s Bed and Breakfast on Eureka Street in Batesville, we’ve been stockpiling damncats in sufficient quantities to match the superat challenge. With felines to spare.