Carencro (historically ) >http://www.thecajuns.com/oldnew.htm) is a small city in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is a suburb of the nearby city of Lafayette, Louisiana. The population was 6,120 at the 2000 United States Census. Its name comes from the Louisiana Creole French word for buzzard: the spot was one where large flocks of buzzards roosted in the bald cypress trees. The name means'carrion crow. '

Carencro is part of the Lafayette, Louisiana Lafayette, Louisiana metropolitan area.

Etymology
Many senior Carencro natives attest that the town's name originates from an unspecified episode of dialogue...

Carencro (historically ) >http://www.thecajuns.com/oldnew.htm) is a small city in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is a suburb of the nearby city of Lafayette, Louisiana. The population was 6,120 at the 2000 United States Census. Its name comes from the Louisiana Creole French word for buzzard: the spot was one where large flocks of buzzards roosted in the bald cypress trees. The name means'carrion crow. '

Carencro is part of the Lafayette, Louisiana Lafayette, Louisiana metropolitan area.

Etymology
Many senior Carencro natives attest that the town's name originates from an unspecified episode of dialogue before the American Civil War. According to this local legend, native Americans told Lafayette, Louisiana settlers that a large number of'carrion crows'had settled around the Vermillion River between Lafayette, Louisiana and Opelousas, Louisiana to feast on the large carcass of a stranded whale or unusual fish die-off. This legend comes from a mastodon, whose bones were collected by a France naturalist shortly afterward and shipped to the Musee du Jardin des Planteurs of Paris, but were unfortunately wrecked and lost at sea. The only relic of the mastodon was a femur or leg bone that was kept by the first Guilbeau and used as a pestle to bruise indigo which was then cultivated in the Attakapas country. Buzzards, in uncountable numbers, flocked to the spot to feed on the mastodon's flesh. The Indians then living in the country, unable to pronounce carrion crows, termed the birds carecros; and from the spot where the mastodon died, the river takes the name of Carencro Bayou. >http://carencrohighschool.org/LA_Studies/Cajun/Buzzard.htm

The'carrion crow'(vulture) nomenclature eventually became the town's name according to this local legend. Although Carencro's current town center lies well west of the Vermillion river, this legend has permanence within the community.

In a letter written on April 23, 1802, Martin Duralde, a former commandant of the Opelousas post, related the legend as it had come down from an Attakapas. Duralde wrote:'Many years before the discovery of the elephant in the bayou called Carancro (sic) an Attakapas savage had informed a man who is at present in my service in the capacity of cow-herd that the ancestors of his nation transmitted (the story) to their descendants that a beast of enormous size had perished either in this bayou or in one of the two water courses a short distance from it without their being able to indicate the true place, the antiquity of the event having without doubt made them forget it. '