Posted on 04/22/2003 4:17:59 PM PDT by Mister Magoo
The Nutria Are Here
The scourge of Louisiana has found a happy home in Dallas' man-made lakes
Nutria can survive in lakes where little else can, and they reproduce and look like rats—giant ones, anyway, with sharp orange buck teeth.
BY CHERYL SMITH
You know it's springtime in Dallas when the crepe myrtles begin to bloom, native wildflowers start their sprouting and the nutria waddle from their drainage pipes and sewers to frolic like kittens in the warm air. With their native land of Argentina too far away for swimming or travel by webbed foot, and a bounty on their ratlike tails in Louisiana, their notorious U.S. stomping grounds, Dallas appears as good a place as any for the buck-toothed, semi-aquatic migrants, who have settled all over the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Wildlife experts speculate the nutria made their way to urban locales such as Bachman Lake, White Rock Lake and other area bodies of water through the city's drainage system. The spring and summer months are peak times for nutria-related calls at Dallas' animal control office, which receives an average of 50 such communiqués a year, senior animal control manager Kent Robertson says. One of 20 animal control officers is usually dispatched to set traps for the furry offenders, who generally live near water but stray on occasion. "People call and say, 'I've got this big rat in my yard and I need it out of here now,'" Robertson says.
The nutria, a member of the rodent family, looks like a beaver in front and a giant rat in back, has wiry whiskers, webbed back feet and can grow as big as a hefty housecat, up to 40 inches long and 20 pounds. When startled or cornered, they can be mean, too, sinking their sharp orange teeth clear through a fisherman's waders. Dallas' warm water and mild winters apparently keep the local nutria population comfortable year-round, even at Bachman Lake, hardly a thriving ecosystem.
One Bachman nutria looks positively giddy as it briefly romps with a small puppy in the grass a few yards from the water's edge. A small, hungry clan promptly appears after a lake visitor strolls off the jogging path closer to the water and begins tossing bread at a group of ducks and pigeons.
"They're a little spoiled," says Ruben Naranjo, parks department maintenance supervisor for the Bachman Lake area.
Spoiled, but apparently not stupid, according to Naranjo. Nutria have lived around the lake for the 17 years Naranjo has worked for the parks department, yet they rarely appear when he's around, he says. He doesn't seek them out, either. "We've never really received any complaints about them, so we just leave them alone," he says. Remarkable, considering the nutria has surpassed the alligator's reputation as the nastiest animal on four legs in Louisiana, where the critters have become the scourge of the state by devouring and tearing it up on a scale that would impress the Tasmanian devil. Thanks to a voracious, largely vegetarian diet, the nutria have stripped once-lush areas of greenery. They have also caused millions of dollars of damage by destroying levees, many of which help channel the Mississippi River, and causing erosion to drainage systems, crucial to keeping the state's low-lying areas above water.
But the nutria's appetite is only part of the problem in Louisiana. It reaches sexual maturity at a mere 4 to 5 months of age and is capable of having as many as 10 or 11 babies per litter several times a year.
As a result, Louisiana has considered just about every scheme to reduce its nutria population. The state has paid hunters and trappers a $4-a-nutria-tail bounty since December. Previous stabs at curbing the nutria population--including getting local chefs to promote nutria meat cuisine--have been unsuccessful.
The United States has Tabasco sauce heir E.A. McIlhenny largely to thank for the critters. McIlhenny bought a dozen or so in Argentina in the 1930s and brought them home to Louisiana's Gulf Coast, hoping to capitalize on the booming fur market by selling their deep brown, beaverlike pelts. But a 1937 storm busted the rodents' cages, freeing their hides while they still had them. Several decades later, there are millions and millions of nutria in Louisiana alone.
States as far north as Maryland and Oregon now blame the nutria for wetlands loss. Of course, not all of the munchers came from McIlhenny's batch. He wasn't the only entrepreneur trying to satisfy the demand for furs with nutria. Their pelts never caught on big, however, and the fur market crashed in the 1980s. With little incentive to hunt and trap them, many nutria that would have died not only lived, but prospered. And reproduced. And reproduced. And reproduced. A nutria's pregnancy lasts about a month at the most. So, as Lou Verner, an urban biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife, puts it, "Basically they're always pregnant." (Maybe that's why nutria have two rows of nipples on their backs. Yes, it's true.) Texas has no statewide office that handles regulation and control of the invasive species. That means individual localities decide how to handle critters like nutria and fire ants, which aren't from here and don't have any major predators, and, as a result, are thriving like crazy.
In Big Bend National Park, fences have been erected around natural springs for fear nutria will finish off what's left of the area's endangered mosquitofish. It's an entirely different story in Dallas, however, where there are no truly large bodies of water and hardly any native vegetation in the lakes. Nutria trapped by local animal control employees simply get released in uninhabited places "around town," Robertson says.
After hearing the saga of the nutria while waiting at the edge of Bachman Lake one bright Sunday for the carp to bite, Enrique Lopez dubs the nutria he's seen paddling around "mojados" (wetbacks). But after recalling the critters got to Louisiana by boat, he decides they're simply "undocumented."
He and his friend Manuel Morales, who fishes Bachman Lake for carp and catfish about once a week, don't mind the furry fishing companions. Every once in a while, a nutria will paddle over to Morales' shaded spot along the lake and crawl out of the water over to the plastic bag holding his bait--often stale tortillas. A couple of the nervy rodents have even attempted to snag a piece. He doesn't see them as pesky, however. "They don't bother me, I don't bother them," Morales says. Lucky for the city, Dallas' lack of wet, heavily vegetated areas helps keep the local nutria community in check, Verner says. Indeed, a quick survey of Bachman Lake's littered parameter reveals an area practically free of anything worth tearing up. This might explain why the lake's nutria are uncharacteristically brazen at times.
"Maybe we just don't have anything there that they really like other than the people feeding them," maintenance manager Naranjo says.
originally published: April 17, 2003
Hmmm. Nutria with Tobasco sauce.
They seem harmless enough. Might try some jerk sauce marinade over a slow fire on the next one I see.
yitbos
Best neuterrat repellent: alligators
yitbos
It's healthier than turkey, as exotic as alligator and, no, it doesn't taste like chicken.
Those things are brutal. I shot a dove with one once and blew it to pieces.
There is a good reason why beavers don't exist south of a certain point down in Florida. I doubt seriously if nutria would stand a chance either.
They pay people to do it. They still can't control the buggers.
Any standard .22 cartridge will do just fine. The wound may or may not be fatal immediately, but the critter will die and then be disposed of by whatever scavenger finds it. Lots of good target practice. just like any varmit. The only question is, will the city allow such shooting? Probably not.
The problem with the neutria is that they eat, in huge proportions, swap cover plants. When that happens the swamp water life changes and some disappear. To keep the balance of the swamp life the Cajuns that live in these swamps have taken up neutria hunts and the LA dept of fisheries and wildlife has offered a 2 dollar bounty on their hides. When I left (about 5 years ago) the major chefs in LA were given the task to find recipes for the neutria meat. It is a high density, low fat, relatively game taste free meat. It's not "musky", it's not soft and mushy, it very good meat. John Fultz and Paul Perdomme were working on that as I left for Minnesota. I have had gumbo, several times, that included neutria meat, and it was a wonderful meal.
I love Cajuns, if it's a threat...EAT IT, if you eat too much of it..grow it and eat it.
The alligator was an "endangered species" years ago. You remember when the environs went crazy about the hunting of gators? Well, that never stopped in the swamps of Louisiana, not one gator. You see, the Cajuns eat them, then they sell the skins to Texans to make boots out of. Ahh...alligator sause pecon......umm! The best thing that you will ever put in your mouth (no, it doesn't taste like chicken...it tastes like gator, and gator is good). Deep fried gator with tabasco and cold beer....I'm cryin' now! God I miss it so. There's a Cajun stew that has the meat base of gator, can't remember the name right now, but the taste still plays on my tongue.
Well, coming back to earth and my diet, the good people of Louisiana will find a fix for this neutria problem and they will do it their way (you have to know a Cajun to know what I'm talking about). The good people of Louisiana and the Cajuns therein are better wildlife managers than any 65 federal agencies. The reason is this: the Cajuns have lived, generation after generation in the swamps and the land of Louisiana. This is their land and their way of life and, for centuries, they have lived, loved, and worked on their land. They need the food that is grown for them by God. The most important thing to them is to manage their own environment. Believe me, they are very good at what they do. They have been doing it for over 200 years.
A beautiful meal, that you will remember for the rest of your life, can be harvested from 40 yards from a swamp cajun's house. The last frontier!
Varmint Cong nutria alert. I wish I had a dime for every time I've heard (the lie) about the cages breaking open in a hurricane.
I have both.
The author must be real new to the Dallas area, because crepe myrtles don't bloom until summertime.
Lots of neuterrats in the salt marshes. Lots of gas rig waterways. The oil companies put in wiers to control tidal erosion. So much salt marsh is leased, Cajuns like nothing better than to knock the wiers down. Erosion makes more oyster water which they seed.
It doesn't bother them at all if the Atchafalaya Swamp has more water, less dry area. That means more crawfish and catfish.
yitbos
A kitchen worker hits a water rat on the head to stun it before it is killed for a meal in a restaurent in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.(AFP/File/Peter Parks)
..... and there is the problem. I kill 30-40 of the damn things every year while duck hunting. They are pests and should be treated like a rat in the hen house.
You're right. They were all the rage.
Nutria is still popular for coats.
One of my favorites is the nutria lined raincoat for a paltry $2400.
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