{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3673", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 3673, "subject": "For alga", "messages": 3, "voices": 2, "first": "2002-12-13T15:45:22+00:00", "last": "2002-12-14T15:54:56+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at cox.net" }, "date": "2002-12-13T15:45:22+00:00", "subject": "(urth) For alga", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Today Florida and Louisiana, tomorrow New York. Beware, alga!\n\nGiant rats roam Florida\nTAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- Like something escaped from a mad scientist's \nlaboratory, the monstrous rodents creep through the underbrush.\nDon't worry, these critters just want some salad.\nThese rats -- as big as the family dog and weighing more than a \nThanksgiving turkey -- are nutria, roaming eastern Hillsborough County as \nthe result of commercialism gone to seed.\n\"I saw this humongous rat on the road,\" said JoAnn Hoffmann, who \nencountered a nutria while driving to work. \"My jaw just dropped.\"\nThe nutria are the remnants of a get-rich-quick scheme some 40 years ago, \nsaid Bill Kern, urban wildlife specialist with the Florida Cooperative \nExtension Service.\nEntrepreneurs imported nutria -- an extremely large South American aquatic \nrat -- to start a fur trade in Florida. But people didn't want to walk \naround in coats or mittens made of the hide or fur of 3-foot-long rats with \nnaked, scaly tails.\n\"The prices dropped so low, nobody bothered to trap them,\" Kern said in \nMonday's editions of the Tampa Tribune.\nThe nutria found homes along lakes, drainage ditches and ponds at dairy \nfarms. Exclusively vegetarian, they dine on aquatic plants.\nThe nutria are not considered game animals, so it's always open season on \nthem. Just don't expect to get rich as a trapper: A nutria pelt might fetch \n$4, Kern said.\n\nNutria tail now worth $4\nWednesday, November 20, 2002\nBy Dan Majors, Post-Gazette Staff Writer\nToday's installment of \"Animals Gone Wild\" involves the nutria, a ravenous \nrodent that is currently consuming the Louisiana coast.\nNutria may sound like some kind of new diet or face cream, but it isn't. \nIt's a big old 10-pound water-dwelling rat-like-lookin' thing from South \nAmerica. (Don't let the name fool you. Think muskrat.)\nThey were brought to this country in the 1930s, before the words \n\"ecological balance\" were coined. Back then, folks were still focused on \nthe words \"fur trade.\"\nIn 1937, 13 of the critters escaped from a colony owned by Tabasco founder \nL.E. McIlhenny, who figured they'd amount to gator bait out there in the \nbayou.\nBut McIlhenny underestimated the nutria. They thrived in Louisiana's marsh \ngrasses. And they proved to be very prolific.\nBesides being born eaters, nutria can reproduce when they are four to six \nmonths old. Meaning a nutria born on Thanksgiving can be a grandma nutria \nby Halloween.\nSure enough, they're raging in Cajun country, overrunning the Gulf of \nMexico wetlands. Ravaging the rice and shredding the sugarcane.\nAnd as they devour the plants, the soil is washing away. At a rate of 35 \nsquare miles a year.\nIn the meantime, demand for nutria fur is pretty much nonexistent.\nPeople have tried to come up with other uses for nutria. The state even \ntried to develop a market for its meat. Its taste, like its reproductive \nabilities, has been compared to rabbit.\nBut it hasn't caught on. No matter how many sauces and spices you throw at \nit, people just don't pick \"rodent gumbo\" off the menu. Even when it's \ntoday's special.\nStill, something has to be done. So, starting today, the state of Louisiana \nis offering a $4-a-tail bounty -- officials prefer the term \"incentive\" -- \nin hopes of wiping out 400,000 nuisance nutria this winter. (Tails must be \nturned in frozen or salted.)\nJust another of the ways that government puts tax dollars to work for a \nbetter world." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice K. Turner", "address": "aturner6 at nyc.rr.com" }, "date": "2002-12-14T03:43:44+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) For alga", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Today Florida and Louisiana, tomorrow New York. Beware, alga!\n\nGiant rats roam Florida\nTAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- Like something escaped from a mad scientist's\nlaboratory, the monstrous rodents creep through the underbrush.\nDon't worry, these critters just want some salad.\nThese rats -- as big as the family dog and weighing more than a\nThanksgiving turkey -- are nutria, roaming eastern Hillsborough County as\nthe result of commercialism gone to seed.\n\"I saw this humongous rat on the road,\" said JoAnn Hoffmann, who\nencountered a nutria while driving to work. \"My jaw just dropped.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Exclusively vegetarian, they dine on aquatic plants." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As we New Yorkers (even gentiles) say; Oy vay!!!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Nutria tail now worth $4" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "On the other hand....\n\n-alga" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at cox.net" }, "date": "2002-12-14T15:54:56+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) For alga", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "At 09:43 PM 12/13/2002, you wrote:\nNutria tail now worth $4" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On the other hand....\n\n-alga" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yeah. It's nice to be worth SOMETHING, even if it's only my ... well....\n\nNutria" } ] } ] }