Nutria

[Mike Weaver]

AKA the coypu, nutria also being the name for the under fur for which they
were farmed.  Here in the U.K. this happened in East Anglia and of course
some escaped, and set to making a comfortable home for themselves in the
Norfolk Broads and Suffolk rivers.  There was a Ministry of Environment
organisation called Coypu Control which by the mid eighties if not earlier
had succeeded in wiping them out.  There is a lot of sugar beet grown in
East Anglia.  Coypu love sugar beet.  It is said that you could hear an
army of coypu eating their way across a field of beet.  Then there was the
undermining of the river banks, not to mention the shock of coming face to
face on a misty night with an exceedingly large rat with big and bright
orange teeth.
The local alternative paper in East Anglia in the seventies ran a wonderful
cartoon strip  Coypu Comix featuring the heroic (but mainly laid back and
idle) rodents and their animal friends as they saw off all attempts of
Coypu Control to catch them.  They had their organised wing - The Coypu
Liberation Army -  favourite political quote, from Mao - "An army marches
on its stomach"
They were our anti-authoritarian mascot, even if Coypu the eponymous focus
of the strip did dress in Rupert Bear's cast offs.