Giant Swamp Rats Invade Louisiana Swamplands
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Florida has its giant snails and New York has its infamous sewer rat. Both states must now take second and third place to Louisiana’s gigantic swamp rats. This invasive species is destroying the state’s magnificent swamplands at an alarming rate.
Described as a “cross between a beaver and a New York sewer rat” these creatures are partly to blame for heavy coastal erosion by eating the plants needed to hold down the soil. It’s estimated there are some five million of them now inhabiting Louisiana’s southern coast, they’re contributing to a rate of soil erosion pegged at 40 square miles a year, Chris Metzier tells Take Part.
The 20-pound animals, which are the subject of Metzier’s upcoming Rodents of Unusual Size, are native to Argentina but were delivered to Louisiana about eight decades ago to be raised for their fur. “One way or another, they escaped into the swamps and have just gone crazy,” says Metzier.
The big question of course is what can be done? Some have tried to popularize eating nutria, and Metzier himself has tried nutria jerky and jambalaya and deemed it “quite tasty.” Unfortunately, most people can’t get over the knowledge that they’re eating swamp rat. A potentially better option: nutria fur, which is being plugged as less cruel and more sustainable, since the animals must be killed as an invasive species anyway. According to Metzier the nutria fur trade has “really taken off in Brooklyn.”
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One of my 7 cats, The Stealth Bomber aka Stealthy, catches rats as big as your arm which is cool but he keeps leaving them in the kitchen either dead and bloody or, even worse, not quite dead and bloody. I’ll send him over. Stealthy’ll sort it out…
See what happens when you fuck with mother nature?