Feds Urge Folks To Eat Big Rodents Common Around Here
Um Um Good: Download Your Free Nutria Cookbook Here
Well, this never happened before. Federal officials are urging Americans to eat big rats as a way to save the environment. These critters are called nutria, they’re “invasive” and plentiful in swamps and marshes of Clay County.
“Save a swamp, sauté a nutria,” says the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, touting nutria meat as lean, mild and tasting like rabbit or turkey drumsticks.
My last nutria sighting happened at the Elks Club in Green Cove Springs, whose riverfront property stands about an inch and a half above sea level. There she was, mama nutria wading through the marsh with six pups in tow, oblivious to her proximity to the best volunteer kitchen in town.
Forget “Hamburger Night,” Elk-sters. How about “Nutria Night,” featuring some “heart healthy crock-pot nutria,” nutria chili or ragondin sausage jambalaya? That last one has to be good if Cajuns have their own name for the animal. The club could invite the public and use this as this poster from Louisiana:
Nutria resemble beaver but without the flat tail. No, nutria tails are more rat-like. The species took hold across southern parts of the U.S. beginning in the 1940s when it was imported from South America for the fur industry. Now, they’ve gone wild, so to speak, and the Jacksonville area is specifically noted as a Florida hotspot.
Unfortunately, nutria are no good, very, very bad for the environment. This from The Guardian newspaper:
Nutria are highly destructive to marsh environments. The rodents eat up to a quarter of their body weight in vegetation daily. Their feeding habits not only destroy native plant life but also destabilize soil structures, which can result in heavy erosion and habitat loss for threatened and endangered species.
Wait a minute, you say. We can’t trust the media. Clay News & Views is just trying to trick us into perpetrating an illegal firearms discharge.
True, you cannot possess a live nutria, but, unlike a gopher tortoise, shooting them is okay. Here is the gospel, according to Florida Fish & Wildife:
In order to reduce restrictions for take of destructive nutria populations, the FWC’s fur-bearer trapping regulations allow statewide nutria trapping year round with no bag limits. The FWC Gun and Light at Night Permit authorizes the take of nutria with a gun and light at night by landowners or by persons with written authorization from landowners.
Quit your bragging about that time you grilled a squirrel. Weighing up to 20 pounds, a nutria can feed a family of four. They are butchered like this:
To make it easy for the cook in the family, we’ve include a free nutria recipe book.
The feds’ eat-the-invaders campaign has stoked its share of humor on social media, which inspired jibes about invaders and cannibalism a la “Solyent Green.” Mostly, though, commenters on X teased our new Health & Human Services secretary, even though RFK Jr. probably doesn’t even know the authors at Fish & Wildlife.
“RFK Jr., I know that’s you,” one poster said, just because rich dude has a penchant for roadkill.
It makes me sick to think of people eating these rodents.
Leave them alone. Good grief.