BLOGGING FROM A TO Z APRIL 2013 – LETTER “N”

NUTRIA

The God of Whimsy came to me in a dream and told me to explore Nutrias, and boy, howdy, am I glad I did! I found out that the coypu, from the Mapudungun language, spoken in Argentina, means "river rat;" It looks like a small capybara. The only thing I remember about that is when one stumbled and fell into the Amazon and Piranha stripped it to a skeleton in about 12 seconds flat. It's amazing the crap kids remember. Anyway, Nutrias are herbivorous and semi-aquatic rodents and weigh about 10 pounds. They were originally only in subtropical and semi-temperate parts of South America, but some dim-bulb fur farmers in Louisiana introduced them to North America, as a cheap substitute for the beaver.

I don't want to wear him. I want to make a pet out of him.

Of course, since they look like giant guinea pigs, with long tails. what harm could they be? As it is with all non-native species, they quickly grew thumbs, keyed the locks on their cages and made off to... Florida! Everything that is on the run ends up in Florida. Bad checks? Off to Florida. Murder for hire? Run to Florida. One too many Nigerian E-mail scams? Destination Florida. Crazier than a shit house rat? Florida's the state for you; you'll fit right in! Giant snake that's going to get gianter? Destination: Everglades. I could write a book on Florida Weird. Thousands have and never repeated the same story twice. That's how insane this state is.

So, apparently, "non-native species" takes on a whole new meaning. This must be "non-earthly species." I fish and have caught some weird stuff in Florida's waters, but nothing that weird. I may have to move back to Michigan.

So, it was inevitable that our friend the Nutria would end up down here. The problem with non-native species, is that there are no predators to control the population. We have a few panthers, but they're farther south There's so much wild life running around down here in Florida, along with people on the lam, that the retirees hardly have room for Bingo and Shuffleboard. I digress however. So, the Nutria is running around down here, after branching out from Louisiana and Mississippi. They've been in Florida since 1955, which is the year I was born. I ran across an interesting statistic. The Nutria has been extirpated from all counties in Florida but one, Hillsborough. This happens to be the county I live in. I'm not sure where they're hiding out, but it isn't in da 'hood.

Yay! We're number one in Nutrias!