levees have been invaluable to Louisiana . Today Nungesser gets to share his passion for the state and its fascinating culture with the world by working with tourism leaders , something that wouldn ’ t have happened if not for Katrina . Another silver lining from Katrina was that Nungesser wound up with his beloved dog Lil ’ Bit , who entered his life during animal rescues that he , his wife Cher and some neighbors undertook around his Plaquemines Parish home in the aftermath of the storm . and circled back , and it was this dog on a board . When I grabbed her to put her in the boat she held on to the wood ; she was in shock . When we got back to the house , we pulled the airboat up and all the animals jumped out but this dog just stayed . When I went to tie the boat up , she was still in it , so we brought her in the house , put her in the windowsill with a blanket and nursed her back to health . My wife kept asking , ‘ Can we keep her ?’ and I ’ d say , ‘ Just for a little bit .’ That ’ s how she got her name .”
“ Lil ’ Bit was probably the smartest dog I ever had ,” says Nungesser of his precious pup . “ We ’ d go out every day in the airboat and rescue cattle and elk ; we ’ d get animals off of rooftops and out of trees .” At the time , Nungesser had a ranch where he raised cattle and elk and he was wrangling his own animals back home and rescuing any animals he came across displaced by the storm . “ One night around dusk we were traveling back along the river batture , and the flood water was still surrounding our home which was on a hill overlooking the Mississippi River . We saw something move in the brush
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In the midst of the destruction and confusion following the storm , Lil ’ Bit , a short-legged mixed breed dog about two years old at the time with Beagle and German Shepherd attributes and a belly that almost touched the ground , wound up becoming ‘ with child .’ “ We ’ d shuffle all the dogs we rescued up to the animal shelter every few days , and there was this yellow lab we called Yella that kept retrieving all the wood from out the storm ,” says Nungesser , who along with Cher found the families of every animal they rescued except for Lil ’ Bit ’ s and Yella ’ s , so they became part of the Nungesser