Attack of the Giant Nutria - a True Story

I'd never seen anything like the creature that emerged from the water of the millrace to waddle on the shore. It seemed huge to me - at least as big as a beaver. It flashed big orange teeth, its fur was gray and coarse looking, its legs skinny with the fur matted and wet. A long rat's tail trailed behind it. It had to be one of the ugliest animals I had ever seen.

I had finally seen my first nutria. I'd recently moved to Oregon, and I'd thought people were pulling my leg when they told me about these creatures. Now I saw that they were right.

For those of you who don't know about them, nutria are an invasive species that inhabit forty different states in the US. They were imported to California from South America in 1899 to replace beaver fur when the beavers had been over-trapped. Of course, they escaped, to breed and reek havoc in fragile ecosystems where they have no natural predators. Supposedly, introduction of the nutria in Oregon can be traced to a Tillamook fur farm. Nutrias average about twenty pounds and eat approximately 25 percent of their weight every day. And two of their densest populations are on the coast, and here in the Willamette Valley, where I live.

In the South, nutria populations have grown so much that the Louisiana government actually put out a cookbook, hoping people would hunt and skin the critters for their epicurean delights. Nutria taste like rabbit or turkey, according to those who have sampled this "swamp beaver". I don't know how well that went over in the South, but here in Oregon, nutria is not featured on any menus that I know of, though I did hear of a farmer in our county that made a fairly tasty jerky from nutria.

Living by the Willamette River, nutria have been a recurring problem in our garden. A friend who had a farm a few miles away routinely went out and blew the invading nutria populace away with his shotgun, but since we are in the city limits, that wasn't an option. Live catch traps work, but then you have to go dump the critter in someone else's rural back yard.

Nutria don't just eat stuff in your garden, they thrash it. Pulverize it. Roll over it and knock it down. They have got to be one of the most destructive garden pests I've ever dealt with. Even with our gang of raccoons, who actually had a tomato fight in the backyard one year - I kid you not. Came out the next morning and tomatoes were everywhere, squished and pulped all over the lawn. And nutria don't have the appeal or cuteness of the raccoons anyway. They were just big, ugly and annoying.

I remember sitting at my computer one summer evening when I heart a thunk outside my window. I looked out to see an arrow embedded in one of my flower boxes. My neighbor, tired of the destruction the nutria were reaping on his garden, had come out back with his crossbow and was hunting the critter through our combined backyards. I went out to the front where it had run, and saw its tail sticking out from under our car. "Step on its tail, and I can shoot it" he yelled at me, placing another arrow in the bow. "Are you nuts? You're going to shoot one of the cats!" I yelled back. Or my foot. No way was I going to take a chance on getting shot, and he'd already missed once anyway. The nutria made an escape out into one of the sewer drains that lead down to the river, and that was the end of that night's adventures.

Some of my neighbors lived in a communal house across the street, and this same nutria destroyed their garden one year as well. I remember one girl, a lovely peaceful vegetarian, resorting to sitting in an apple tree in the front yard in the pre-dawn hours, armed with a shovel and ready to bash its brains out if it came near their corn patch.

We got a live trap and tried to catch the nutria. It was a wily old thing. Always managed to get the bait and get away before the door shut. One of my neighbors finally got it, and took it upriver where there were no houses. Not that it matters much. Nutria swim, and this one probably ended up in someone else's farm or garden.

I've seen nutria in our garden off and on over the past couple of years , but they haven't been around as much as before. I see them often at the wetlands by the bike path; maybe they've settled in there and don't feel the need to venture into the neighborhoods as much, with the inherent dangers of dogs and angry gardeners with sharp shovels (and crossbows). It's been a relief, but as the weather warms, and I turn the soil and plant my starts and seeds, I'll still be on the lookout for the lumbering creature with the giant orange teeth, the rat tail, and the ability to turn vegetarians into Neolithic hunters!