NUTRIA: Kitty's Current Furry Obsession
Some people probably thought I made nutria up. I didn't; they really do exist. I first discovered them during a French I class when I was a freshman. Puddin's mom was talking about New Orleans and Cajun food and mentioned nutria , which she described as small and rodent like. Lately I have brushed up on nutria and found the following marginally interesting facts:
1. Nutria are about two feet long, weigh eight to eighteen pounds, look like beavers without the long flat tail,and have neat yellow pointy chisel teeth to eat plants with. Mr. Furrykins likes macaroni. (Kitty likes MACCAroni, but that's another splut.) Sometimes Mr Furrykins and Punkin fight over macaroni and Kitty has to get out the cheese blocks to break it up.
2. They were originally brought from South America for fur and food, which strikes me as hideously revolting. They're too cuuuuute!
3. Nutrias are frequently found in streams, lakes, ponds, swamps and marshes west of the Cascades. Wherever those are.
4. They eat three pounds of food a day and can go for a month without eating. I would make a lousy nutria.
5. They live in forty states and like to decimate things such as rice and sugarfield, dikes along bayous, and wildlife refuges. It's not their fault; now that fur is considered evil, all the furriers let them go to forage for themselves. Which is better than being a coat, but still not very nice.
This is what Britannica Online had to say about nutria.
NUTRIA: rodent usually placed with the hutia in the family Capromyidae (order Rodentia), sometimes classified in a separate family, Myocastoridae. The nutria is a robust, muskrat-like animal with small eyes and ears, a rounded, scaly tail, partially webbed hind feet, and broad, orange incisors. It is about 1 metre (39 inches) long, including the long tail, and may weigh about 8 kilograms (17 1/2 pounds). Its fur is reddish brown and consists of coarse guard hairs overlying a soft undercoat. The nutria lives in a shallow burrow along a pond or river and feeds mainly on aquatic plants. It produces up to three litters of two to eight young per year; gestation takes about 135 days. Nutria fur is of some value in the fur trade. Persistent hunting in the 19th and early 20th centuries, however, led to a decline in populations. The animal was subsequently introduced into North America and Europe forbreeding purposes. Some nutrias escaped or were turned loose, and in many countries they have become pests that damage crops and competewith other wildlife.
...other wildlife? like DEER? I love it.
That's about all I could find. Most of the sites were in Spanish or German, for some reason.