I’m spending a few days in Baton Rouge to cover the flooding. I’ve talked to people who were wandering around outside their flooded neighborhood, waiting to go home to survey the damage. Several would remark that last month, three Baton Rouge officers were killed. An additional flood seemed like a bit much to them.

Despite the serious nature of the floods, many people started cracking jokes when they saw the reporter walk up.

“I always dreamed of owning waterfront property,” one guy would tell me.

Another looked across the street and said, “Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.”

I can only imagine how much control one must have over his emotions to lose everything he owns (the same guy would lament that he only had time to grab some clothes and his phone. He had to leave family pictures in his house) and still have the wherewithal to quote lines from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

That’s one of the things that sticks out to me when I’m covering a disaster: many of the people affected still want to joke around (Loyal Scaiaholics will recall this Spring’s blog about meeting tornado victims with Kix Brooks for some reason).

As a member of society, I was willing to offer whatever help I could. One woman was complaining about how she couldn’t find anywhere to get food.

“Even Wal-Mart’s closed!” she wailed.

Some stores and restaurants had to shut down because employees couldn’t make it to work. I felt it would be too hard on her to learn that I’d passed a closed Waffle House on the way to this neighborhood.

I did, however, stop at a Buc-ee’s on my way out of the Metroplex last night, so I went back to my car and offered her some Beaver Nuggets. She’d never had a Beaver Nugget before. And she was pleased with them.

Another gentleman started yelling at this guy in a canoe.

“You’re paddling against the current! It’ll take you forever… wherever you’re going!”

He looked at me and raised his hand for a high five. He would then offer me a ride in his canoe to get closer to the damage.

He explained that he doesn’t have anything else to do because his house was back there and he can’t go home.

I politely declined but offered him some Beaver Nuggets before I left.

My brother would see these pictures and ask if I was photographing from a boat. He chided me for not taking the free canoe ride, suggesting that Anderson Cooper would accept the offer.

I started a thoughtful response about how my job is not to make the story about me, how I couldn’t risk so much time on a canoe ride that might last a couple hours, only to find his house was not reachable.

Instead, I would point out that Anderson Cooper probably knows how to swim.

Now that I think about it, it was probably reckless for a guy who doesn’t know how to swim to wander past a National Guard fortification and start chatting up some firefighters who were having lunch in between rescue calls. In my defense, though, the firefighters would explain that while they were still getting rescue calls, the water was receding.

The day before, they explained, they couldn’t stand on dry ground anywhere near that spot.

“Actually, way out there where your car’s parked would have been under water, too.”

We can only hope Beaver Nuggets are waterproof.