Tim Mueller / AP

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's children, from left, Slade, Selia and Shaan walk the steps to the podium Jan. 9, 2012 during Jindal's Inaugural ceremony at the Old State Capitol in Baton Rouge, La.

I think the Jindal children stole the show at their father's inauguration.

Nola.com reports: The two-day swirl of events surrounding Gov. Bobby Jindal's inauguration to a second term got off to a solemn start Sunday when two dozen religious leaders from various faiths prayed for the governor, all other elected officials and the future of Louisiana.

Tim Mueller / AP

From left, Selia, Shaan and Slade Jindal peer into a canister presented to their father, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, right, during inaugural ceremonies Monday, Jan. 9, 2012 in Baton Rouge, La. Jindal and his wife, Supriya Jindal, center, were given the canister after the nineteen cannon salute and the posting of the colors by the Louisana Army National Guard.

Kerry Maloney / AP

Alabama student Sara Berthaume taunts LSU students Joel Boudreaux, left, and Leif Dubois in the French Quarter before the BCS title football game in New Orleans, Jan. 9, 2012.

Who are you picking? (vote below)

AP reports: NEW ORLEANS - LSU and Alabama fans pitched tents, flew banners and cooked up Deep South staples like gumbo and barbecue in what had turned into a massive party ahead of Monday night's BCS national championship game.

Alabama fans started lining up at the stadium shortly after dawn to pick up tickets for the night's game, featuring the nation's two top-ranked college teams in a rematch of a November game won by LSU.

Kerry Maloney / AP

LSU alumni, from left, Troy Aucion and Matt Sotile throw beads to fans in the French Quarter before the BCS title football game in New Orleans, Jan. 9, 2012.

Gerald Herbert / AP

Fans cheer before the BCS National Championship college football game between LSU and Alabama, Jan. 9, 2012, in New Orleans.

Excerpted from Once Magazine:

Spencer Strub writes: The one with pretty eyes almost got Curtis “Rebel” Rageur. All alligators' eyes are like cats’ eyes, marbled and iridescent, lined by the tapetum lucidum that flashes in the night. This particular alligator, however, had unusually beautiful eyes. (Editor's note: Some images in this post are graphic.)

Matt Eich / LUCEO for Once Magazine

A baited hook hangs low to the water of Shell Island, La., where commercial gator hunters Julius and Rebel are part way through the annual alligator hunting season. The state of Louisiana is home to the largest alligator population in the United States, estimated to be almost 2 million. Alligators are North America's largest reptiles and are considered a renewable resource in an industry that has thrived in America's deep south for centuries. The first large alligator harvests occurred during the early 1800s. The alligator farming industry in Louisiana alone annually harvests 140,000-170,000 gators which are valued at over $12,000,000.

Rageur couldn’t help but stop and stare. The catch had been relatively simple: no bayou-bank scramble, no reaching under the boat to free a stuck line, only a hard pull, a quick haul to lift the alligator from the water into the boat, and a single gunshot to the head. The gator lay prone and still, dead enough.

Matt Eich / LUCEO for Once Magazine

Rebel eyes the shore for a gator that had taken the baited line into the reeds while alligator hunting near Shell Island, La., on Sept. 19, 2009.

Rageur turned, breaking his eye-to-eye reverie to attend to the other side of the boat. With his legs splayed over the alligator’s mouth, he noticed the alligator start to move. “When they start moving around in the boat,” Rageur says, “you get nervous.” The alligator leapt upwards, but Rageur leapt faster, saving his legs and other vitals.

Matt Eich / LUCEO for Once Magazine

Rebel plants a second bullet in the head of a gator that kept moving after being hauled into the boat while hunting for alligators near Shell Island, La. Each gator is then tagged before being piled in the bottom of the boat.

Jaws closed on air. Rageur drew his handgun and fired again. And again. This experience isn’t entirely uncommon: Rageur says that an alligator that looks dead may revive, even after being shot in the head. He has had to shoot alligators as many as eight times to keep them down. “It gets a little hairy at times,” Rageur admits. 

Matt Eich / LUCEO for Once Magazine

Bodies of recently caught alligators line the bottom of the boat. Julius Gaudet, 62, and Rebel average nine gators a day but this day landed thirteen.

Msnbc.com is starting a partnership with Once Magazine. They attracted our attention on a couple of fronts. First, in an age of ever more bite-sized journalism, they were setting out with a contrarian goal; to publish long-form stories each month. Second, they wanted those stories, which touch on a wide range of topics, to rest on “visually arresting” imagery. And they’ve done that, which is why we wanted to share an excerpt from one of their first stories here.

Finally, the founders are trying to change the traditional publishing model. Thanks to the democratization of online delivery and app development, they are trying out their ideas with an iPad app. The free pilot issue debuted in September, followed by their first paid issue in October. If you decide to download their app, part of the revenue from that sale will be shared directly with the contributing photographers.

For the full stories and more from Once Magazine:

Once magazine online

Once magazine iPad app

Janet McConaughey of AP reports from Cow Island Lake, La.: Cindy Ransonet stood tiptoed atop the small boat's cabin and pulled an osprey chick from the nest of a bald cypress tree.

Janet McConnaughey / AP

Tour guide Kim Voorhies of Lafayette, La., giving a day to rescuing osprey chicks in nests too close to floodwaters from the Morganza Spillway, hands a chick to licensed bird rehabilitator Cindy Ransonet of New Iberia, La., on March 17, 2011. Cow Island Lake in St. Martin Parish already was about seven feet above its usual level, and Voorhies said alligators had eaten chicks from lower nests. The water was still rising, and Voorhies' father, who got federal approval for the mission, said it would bring the nest into alligator reach at the crest. (AP Photo/Janet McConnaughey)

As parent ospreys circled overhead and shrieked, the licensed Louisiana wildlife volunteer lifted the chick gently from the messy, four-foot-wide nest of sticks and handed it to the boat's operator. Rehabilitator Donna Gee then banded it and placed the bird in a plastic portable kennel.

The rising waters unleashed in parts of Louisiana by the opening of the Morganza spillway, to protect New Orleans and Baton Rouge from Mississippi River flooding, has sent people and wildlife searching for higher ground while leaving birds such as the osprey chicks at risk.

Janet McConnaughey / AP

Cindy Ransonet hands an osprey chick to the driver of a boat that took Ransonet and another wildlife rescue volunteer to nests in danger from rising floodwaters in the Atchafalaya Basin on March 17. Although the nests were five to seven feet from the waters of Cow Island Lake at the time, the lake was expected to rise another four to seven feet, putting them in easy reach of alligators.

In recent days, bird rehabilitators have swooped in and rescued osprey chicks and eggs from this lake in the Atchafalaya Basin. A guide who usually shows them to tourists and photographers got federal approval, saying the nests would soon be under water or in reach of alligators.

The group hopes to return the chicks when the floodwaters recede, part of various efforts to rescue animals injured or threatened by the floods.

Janet McConnaughey / AP

An osprey chick too young even to sit up is weighed at the home of wildlife rehabilitator Donna Gee of Youngsville, La., on March 17. Gee and licensed rehabilitator CIndy Ransonet collected 13 chicks and three eggs March 13 and 17 from nests that they considered likely to be overtaken by floodwaters or to come within alligator reach when the nearby Atchafalaya River crests.

Read the full story and see more images of the floods in our slideshow.

Last year, Associated Press photographer Gerald Herbert covered the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and its aftermath. This month, he returned to see how one impacted area off the coast of Louisiana, Cat Island, is faring a year after the environmental disaster. He discovered a changed ecosystem where land is eroding and vegetation is dead or dying. Biologists from the Louisiana Department of Fish and Wildlife say Cat Island is struggling to recover because the island was completely washed by oil, in part because of poorly maintained oil booms.

Herbert writes: There is no question that Cat Island in Barataria Bay has eroded considerably. Much of the mangrove and marsh grass is gone. The thickets of mangrove, which you could not see through before, now are thinned so much that you can see straight through them. It is quite stunning -- and sad for someone who has seen the previous state of this island -- how much the island has deteriorated both in the accelerated erosion and in the destruction of the flora.

Gerald Herbert / AP

At left, oil smeared pelican eggs are seen in a nest on Cat Island on May 22, 2010 just days after the explosion and subsequent leak began. The island is home to hundreds of brown pelican nests as well at terns, gulls and roseate spoonbills. The photo on right, made at the same spot on April 8, 2011, shows the island significantly eroded and the marsh grass and mangrove trees that pelicans nest on decimated.

Gerald Herbert / AP

At left, oil stained pelicans and baby pelicans are seen on May 23, 2010, on Cat Island. In the image at right, photographed in the same spot on April 8, 2011, the shoreline is heavily eroded and the lush thickets of mangrove trees are mostly dead or dying.

Herbert writes: The pelicans in the region are faring better because they are no longer, for the large part, being contaminated by the oil. The large bands of crude aren't washing onto the nesting shorelines. But, from my unscientific observations, and from reviewing photos and video from then and now, there seem to be fewer pelicans taking flight in the air when we approach the island, probably because there's less real estate to nest there.

Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries biologists told me that pelicans have a very high nesting fidelity, meaning they nest in the same spots where they were nestlings. As a result, where the mangrove has died on Cat Island, you could see pelican nests on the earthen ground. They used to be safely atop the mangrove, which stand roughly three to six feet tall. Those nests are now exposed to ruin from any storm surge that could come through, even from the many tropical depressions and storms that come through almost yearly.

So the pelicans are faring better because they are not faced with the onslaught of crude that we saw during the oil spill, but their habitat in some places has been severely compromised.

Gerald Herbert / AP

In this two picture combo, nesting terns and pelicans are seen on Cat Island on May 22, 2010, left, as oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill impacts the shore. The second photo taken on April 8, 2011 near the same location, shows the shoreline heavily eroded, and the lush marsh grass and mangrove trees mostly dead or dying.

Gerald Herbert / AP

In this two picture combo, pelican eggs smeared with crude oil sit in a nest on on Cat Island in Barataria Bay on May 22, 2010, left. The second photo, taken April 8, 2011, shows newly hatched pelican chicks on the same island.

Gerald Herbert / AP

In this two picture combo, nesting pelicans are seen landing as oil washes ashore on May 22, 2010, left, on Cat Island. The second photo, taken in the same spot on April 8, 2011, shows the shoreline heavily eroded, and the lush marsh grass and mangrove trees mostly dead or dying.

See the most compelling images from the oil spill one year ago.

Patrick Semansky / AP

Mardi Gras reveler Mike Turpin, whose night still isn't over, reacts as a front loader collects beads and other debris left behind by revelers on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, early Wednesday, March 9. Ash Wednesday marks the end of Mardi Gras festivities and the beginning of the Lenten season for Catholics.

Patrick Semansky / AP

A man runs for shelter as rain pours down on a nearly deserted Bourbon Street.

Patrick Semansky / AP

Workers use front loaders to clean up beads and other debris left behind by Mardi Gras revelers on Bourbon Street.

 These morning-after images give a pretty good idea of just how hard they partied in New Orleans over the past few days.  See more images from celebrations around the world here.