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 ...
Do I need to say it? The laws in CA are backasswards if it is an invasive species, but it is illegal to hunt them?
IIRC, years ago when the smart people here in Louisiana made one of their periodic attempts to convince us that Nutria was a tasty meal, my old buddy Moon Griffon did up some t-shirts with “Nutria Rat on a Stick” theme.
They’ll make it the Mexifornia state rodent.
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