Posted on 03/05/2018 12:51:15 PM PST by nickcarraway
It's been about a month since California wildlife officials started sounding the alarm on nutria, invasive South American rodents that look like enormous, 20-pound rats and have the power to devastate wetlands. They're making a comeback after being eradicated in the 1970s and have been spotted in Stanislaus, Fresno, Tuolumne and Merced counties so far.
"We didn't know at first if it was a small, isolated population," California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesman Peter Tira told the Chronicle in February. "But it became clear that it's a breeding population, and they're reaching major waterways where they can move."
It was only a matter of time until someone suggested eating them.
A recent article on tech news site The Verge, entitled "The case for eating California's giant invasive rodents," broached the topic, pointing out that nutria "apparently taste great in jambalaya."
The idea of eating the giant swamp rats is one that's come up in other states where they've become a problem. In Louisiana, where nutria were imported to be bred for their fur until some of them broke free and quickly reproduced beyond controllable numbers, officials have been trying to drum up excitement about eating nutria for decades now. A 1997 New York Times headline declared, "Louisiana is trying to turn a pest into a meal."
That task posed a marketing challenge, however; one Loyola University professor observed to the Times, ''I just don't think people like to eat things that they see dead on the highway."
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries tried to market the meat by its French name, ragondin, to limited success, the New Yorker reported in 2014.
There are many creatures that provoke squeamishness in some but others find tasty -- crickets, for instance, or snails. In the case of nutria, though,
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
What’s the theory?
Calif. will probably put them on the Endangered Species list.
Practically anything from Australia. I'd be in favor of something spiderish...
Mongoose. Mongooses? Mongossi? Mongeese?
AH! Rikki-Tikki-Tavi!
They sound nutriatious.
Meat is meat.
“offer $5 bounty on each rat/nutria”
Considering they were once nearly eradicated here, there is a formula that works.
It just needs to be repeated, and completed this time.
And yes, thousands of kids with .22 rifles could do the job easily at $5 per.
In Los Angeles they resemble human beings
Ha, they are still eating rats in Nam. Why not do a media blitz in Asia and deport them. Maybe they’ll stop eating dogs.
McShakes?
Are nutria halal?
Really?
Yet people eat venison on a regular basis.
Find another theory.
Make a movie about them and maybe it will win an Oscar like The Shape of Water. Especially if you throw in human-animal sex. /sarcasm
“nutria” just sounds like something you should eat.
I think you mean a straight tailed beaver....
Nutria Susie and Nutria Sam
Do the jitterbug out in Nutria land
Killer Whales.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.