Remember my rant last month about the District’s lack of Louisiana crawfish and the big communal boils that are so common down south during Lent?

Well, the post-Lenten season is here — and so are the Louisiana mudbugs. Not one but two restaurants are now hosting crawfish boils.

Acadiana starts up its weekly boil on the patio today. Each Friday during crawfish season, chef Jeff Tunks‘ Louisiana kitchen gets a shipment of live mudbugs from the Pelican State and boils them up on the patio from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. No reservations required.

A pound of those boiled mudbugs will set you back $13 a pound at Acadiana. If for some reason, you’d prefer to attend a crawfish boil and eat shrimp, you can get a pound of those crustaceans, too, for $17. Nothing goes better with boiled crawfish than a bottle of ice cold beer, and Acadiana has you covered there, too. Buckets of Abita, four bottles to a pail, are available for $12. A pitcher of the Louisiana beer will set you back $15.

Over in Arlington, the Cowboy Cafe does away with the by-the-pound formalities. You can eat all the Louisiana mudbugs you want for $25.99. (Or just get a plate for $15.99.) The crawfish are flown in live from Louisiana each Saturday morning.

Cowboy Cafe will hold the boils each Saturday through the crawfish season, which roughly runs through June or early July. The boils are part celebration of Louisiana culture, given that Cowboy owner Zac Culbertson hails from New Orleans; they’re also part fundraiser for the USO, given that Culbertson’s brother is deployed in Afghanistan.

That’s right, you can suck on some crawfish heads and help the USO pay for the touring costs of Gary Sinise and the Lt. Dan Band.