9:59 minutes (2.29 MB)
The collateral and infrastructural effects of Hurricane Katrina have long been acknowledged as massive. Parks, playgrounds and green spaces were also washed away, representing an environmental loss in the Gulf Region that time cannot heal and apathy cannot ignore. In this segment of Meet the Planet Katie Rose, AmeriCorp Field Director of the Gulf Coast Recovery Corp/SCA partnership, discu

For a look pack at the headlines Mother Nature made this year, check out National Geographic’s top ten list of the year’s news headlines. The readers’ choice list includes

Which parts of the U.S. have put themselves in nature’s way? After “Hurricane Katrina swamped the Gulf Coast, the words wetlands and levees were on everyone’s lips. If only more swampy areas had been preserved and then could have blunted the storm’s force. If only protective infrastructure had been properly maintained so it could hold up to a walloping hurricane.

Café du Monde it’s not. But Marjorie Morris may have gotten a taste of New Orleans when she bought a 2-pound bag of freeze-dried Folgers coffee containing a dead baby turtle.

Like a prize in a Cracker jack box, only perhaps slightly more disappointing, the turtle was discovered near the bottom of the bag after Morris had been using the coffee for a month.

“I thought it was a toy at first,” said Morris.

But was it a bit of Hurricane Katrina blowback? A customer service representative for Folgers explained to the understandably perplexed Morris that because more than half of Folgers coffee is produced at its New Orleans plant the turtle may have ended up in the bag as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

How many tiny terrapins gasped their last trapped in a bag of coffee while self-proclaimed FEMA “fashion god”Michael Brown was busy e-mailing his pals about his wardrobe? Oh, the humanity.