Their pelts never caught on big, however, and the fur market crashed in the 1980s. He wasn't the only entrepreneur trying to satisfy the demand for furs with nutria. Of course, not all of the munchers came from McIlhenny's batch. States as far north as Maryland and Oregon now blame the nutria for wetlands loss. Several decades later, there are millions and millions of nutria in Louisiana alone. But a 1937 storm busted the rodents' cages, freeing their hides while they still had them. McIlhenny bought a dozen or so in Argentina in the 1930s and brought them home to Louisiana's Gulf Coast, hoping to capitalize on the booming fur market by selling their deep brown, beaverlike pelts. McIlhenny largely to thank for the critters. The United States has Tabasco sauce heir E.A. Previous stabs at curbing the nutria population-including getting local chefs to promote nutria meat cuisine-have been unsuccessful. The state has paid hunters and trappers a $4-a-nutria-tail bounty since December. It reaches sexual maturity at a mere 4 to 5 months of age and is capable of having as many as 10 or 11 babies per litter several times a year.Īs a result, Louisiana has considered just about every scheme to reduce its nutria population. They have also caused millions of dollars of damage by destroying levees, many of which help channel the Mississippi River, and causing erosion to drainage systems, crucial to keeping the state's low-lying areas above water.īut the nutria's appetite is only part of the problem in Louisiana. Thanks to a voracious, largely vegetarian diet, the nutria have stripped once-lush areas of greenery. Remarkable, considering the nutria has surpassed the alligator's reputation as the nastiest animal on four legs in Louisiana, where the critters have become the scourge of the state by devouring and tearing it up on a scale that would impress the Tasmanian devil. "We've never really received any complaints about them, so we just leave them alone," he says. Nutria have lived around the lake for the 17 years Naranjo has worked for the parks department, yet they rarely appear when he's around, he says. Spoiled, but apparently not stupid, according to Naranjo. "They're a little spoiled," says Ruben Naranjo, parks department maintenance supervisor for the Bachman Lake area. A small, hungry clan promptly appears after a lake visitor strolls off the jogging path closer to the water and begins tossing bread at a group of ducks and pigeons. One Bachman nutria looks positively giddy as it briefly romps with a small puppy in the grass a few yards from the water's edge. Dallas' warm water and mild winters apparently keep the local nutria population comfortable year-round, even at Bachman Lake, hardly a thriving ecosystem. When startled or cornered, they can be mean, too, sinking their sharp orange teeth clear through a fisherman's waders.
The nutria, a member of the rodent family, looks like a beaver in front and a giant rat in back, has wiry whiskers, webbed back feet and can grow as big as a hefty housecat, up to 40 inches long and 20 pounds. "People call and say, 'I've got this big rat in my yard and I need it out of here now,'" Robertson says. One of 20 animal control officers is usually dispatched to set traps for the furry offenders, who generally live near water but stray on occasion. The spring and summer months are peak times for nutria-related calls at Dallas' animal control office, which receives an average of 50 such communiqués a year, senior animal control manager Kent Robertson says. Wildlife experts speculate the nutria made their way to urban locales such as Bachman Lake, White Rock Lake and other area bodies of water through the city's drainage system. stomping grounds, Dallas appears as good a place as any for the buck-toothed, semi-aquatic migrants, who have settled all over the Dallas-Fort Worth area. With their native land of Argentina too far away for swimming or travel by webbed foot, and a bounty on their ratlike tails in Louisiana, their notorious U.S. You know it's springtime in Dallas when the crepe myrtles begin to bloom, native wildflowers start their sprouting and the nutria waddle from their drainage pipes and sewers to frolic like kittens in the warm air. Nutria can survive in lakes where little else can, and they reproduce and look like ratsgiant ones, anyway, with sharp orange buck teeth. The scourge of Louisiana has found a happy home in Dallas' man-made lakes
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