GRGR(3): Jessica and Roger, Mind-to-mind

[Tim Kordas]

Doug Millison wrote:
> If I remember correctly from my now too-long-ago southwest Louisiana
> childhood, the nutria is a pest species that was introduced from somewhere
> else and went on to dominate the ecosystems -- a sort of nouveau upstart
> upsetting the local social balance, you might say. When I was a boy, my
> friends and I used to take our .22 rifles out and shoot them from the
> levees -- big, slow-moving, much easier to hit than squirrels. 

Check out:
http://www.ssc.nbs.gov/special/nutquest.html

and they're apparently quite tasty:
http://www.ssc.nbs.gov/special/cookoff.html

They were brought back from McIlhenny's South American plantations
by a member of the McIlhenny family. "In 1940 some nutria escaped
during a hurricane ... by 1955 the Louisiana Department of Wildlife
and Fisheries estimated that there were 20 million nutria in Louisiana."

In recent years there have been many attempts to bring back nutria hunting
and nutria eating ... apparently the critters cause massive erosion and
crop damage.

I recently took a trip to the Tabasco factory on Avery Island, and the
nature preserve there has a lot of photos of nutria ... but I didn't 
get to see any in the flesh.

-Tim