PLAQUEMINE — Artists are known to draw inspiration from everywhere, and that was definitely the case for Earl Comeaux when he started thinking about his Mardi Gras float this year.
“Last year we built a crawfish, and that was kind of fun. So this year I was thinking, ‘What could we do?,’” Comeaux said. “I saw a dead armadillo one day in the road, and I said, ‘Why don’t we build a float like an armadillo, dead, upside down?’ There’s no upside down flows that I know of, and I didn’t know of any armadillo in the state, so thought it was fun to try.”
It took about half a dozen people around five weeks to build, starting with a steel structure and then working on the upstairs. Then they glued six inch styrofoam blocks around the entire structure. “We used 84 sheets of Styrofoam,” Comeaux said. “After we got all the styrofoam on it and glued and everything down, we drew it all out and started carving.”
About 26 people can fit on the top of the float, and when someone is on it, they’re pretty high up. “When you stand up there, you’re about 12 feet off the ground,” Comeaux said…