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Michael Spooneybarger / Reuters
Nutria pile up along the shore on Aug. 31 after Hurricane Isaac went through Waveland, Miss.
If there's a silver lining for the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Isaac, it might just be this: the surge of water flushed out, and drowned, thousands of nutria — giant rodents originally from South America that are eating away at coastal marshlands, which act as barriers from storms.
Most of the dead nutria have washed up on beaches in Mississippi's Hancock and Harrison counties.
"Estimates are there will be over 20,000 carcasses," Robbie Wilbur, spokesman for the state's department of environmental quality, told NBC News.
In the short term, that many rotting carcasses is a health hazard.
"It's a terrible smell," David Garcia, mayor of Waveland in Hancock county, told WLOX-TV. "As this heat continues, they're just going to blow up and pop, making it even more of a health hazard."
Crews over the weekend started removing the nutria, aka swamp rats, though it's not an easy task.
"As they're picking them up, they're busting open," Hancock County Supervisor David Yarborough told the Biloxi-Gulfport Sun Herald.
A federal contractor with experience in hazardous waste has been brought in, but even a handful of its workers had quit Sunday morning, the Sun Herald reported.
"There's people who can't take the sight of something like this," Yarborough said. "That's the reason I wouldn't even attempt this with county people. You really should be certified and trained in hazardous waste."
County crews tried to deal with a similar situation after Hurricane Gustav in 2008 "and we had people getting sick; wound up buying everybody's clothes," he added.
Classified as rodents even though they are semi-aquatic, nutria were released in Louisiana and Mississippi back in the 1930s by fur trappers looking for new stock. Populations were kept in check as long as fur prices were good, but a collapse in the 1980s led to a collapse in trapping and a population now estimated at several million.
As a result, nutria are "one of the Gulf South’s most notorious invasive species, wreaking ecological havoc on native wetland vegetation and contributing to coastal erosion problems," Mississippi's Department of Environmental Quality said in its plan for dealing with invasives.
The erosion is done by nutria "digging into thin soils and eating roots of marsh vegetation," the department states. "As the vegetation dies, the fine-grained, denuded soils become more vulnerable to erosion, eventually forming expanding holes in the marsh called 'eat-outs'."
The species is also a speedy breeder: nutria reach sexual maturity at just four months old, and females are able to breed within 48 hours of giving birth to a litter.
Back along the beaches, the thousands of nutria carcasses are being taken to a nearby landfill, while those in areas away from the public will be left there.
"We're letting mother nature take care of those," Chad Lafontaine, with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, told the Sun Herald.
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Yum. Fried nutria and cheese grits. Good groceries.
Have Open season again on them, skin them for coats, and use the meat for pink slime.. There is a protein shortage all over the world. N. Korea will eat it, china will eat anything, aftrica... call it jungle meat.. they will never know... do the environment a favor.. eat one today.
Let's see. You could make Ratatoulli stew, ummm..., rats in a blanket, ummm, Rat Roti (jamacian style with sauce), ummm... Rat casserole in a pine nut horseradish sauce with a hint of garlic and a drizzle of white wine, ummm, Instead of beef stew, rat stew., rat burgers, rat a Lacarte, rat pate on a Ritz cracker, hahahahahahahahahahaha. done.
Chittlin's come from a pig, how about rattlin's. hahahahaha
hahahahahahaha @ Umish. hahahahahaha
Send them to Chik-fi-lay. Eat more chicken.
They are looking for Willard their rat master just like in the horror flick.
I guess they didn't get the memo on Isaac. Maybe they got it and didn't read it. Democrats do that too.
No, they new about Isaac and decided to stay. Figured the government would help them.
Did the democrats get them on the voter registration to vote for Obama yet?
LMAO. Good one.
Just wondering how long does it take for mother nature to take care of those.
Export them to Japan or Korea... They are all about eating anything...
I thought the storm wash up all the rats, where is Romney and Ryan.
Any apple pies or a drink with that nutria order?
Must be an oil executive conference in town.
You sure those aren't Republicans left over from the convention just laying out on the beach?
That first one in the photo looks like Dick Cheney, and look there's Jeb Bush, and there's Eric Cantor!!!
Hmmm protein source as well as hides to make fur coats with: Possibilities!
Send them, to TLC- for Honey Boo Boo, her mother cooks and feeds her road kill, this might be a step up for them and look how long 20K of these rats would last them.........................
On the bright side... 20K fewer of them at the DNC.
Seems like climate change to me. It kills everything. Even every swamp rat. Mass extinction - die off rate 10 times faster than normal. Just like al gore and 98% of the climate scientists said it's because of co2 from fossil fuels.
No. No. No. Say mr grover, the gop, the rushbo, & foxnews.com. Co2 has nothing to do with climate change. That 98% of the climate scientists say climate change is based at least in some part on co2. That 1.95% say they are not sure if co2 has a role in climate change or not. That 0.05% say co2 plays no part in climate change in any way. And mr grover, the gop, the rushbo, & foxnews.com say these 0.05% of the world's climate scientists are absolutely correct.
Further, that we should employ hundreds of thousands working on the tar oil keystone xl pipeline from canada to texas. 100% of climate scientists agree this will cause co2 emissions to skyrocket up from the 1990 co2 emissions levels of today.
But if you were to ask mr grover, the gop, the rushbo, & foxnews.com - what would happen if the 1 of 2,000 of the world's climate scientists who say co2 have nothing to do with climate change are wrong. I tell you they give you no answer. The consequences of al gore's hockey stick off the top of the charts temperatures are so dire. So they will tell you the kock bros, who gives them $100M/month, told them that the keystone xl pipeline must be built.
Rushbo, et al. are afraid of the Boogie Man. They have too many demons inside them to face the reality of a finite existence. They are not a peace...so therefore they resist the notions that tell us that no, we just may not last forever after all.
Allow me to confess that I am stunned by your mastery of the subject, Marshal - the sheer numbers, certitude and precision of your statistics and percentages is remarkable! So remarkable, in fact, that I must wonder if maybe you're just makin' this stuff up...
Rates of extinction are now "10 times faster than normal"? Normal what? You mean "normal" compared to the Permian die-off? What's the baseline, here? Did I misplace all my Passenger Pigeons?
Or "98% of the climate scientists say..." - Really? My own research indicates substantial numbers of dissenters from the notion of CO2 modulated AGW among meteorologists and climatologists and geophysicists (while a number of the doctorate-holding signatories to the UN's Climate Change Panel's reports hold such relevant degrees as "Dr. of Podiatry"). Then again, it's kind of a meaningless statistic anyway, since what you claim those 98% agree on is that "climate change is based at least in some part on co2..." Well, um, quite possibly. It's also "based at least in some part" on cow farts (tho', truthfully, cow belches probably contribute as much or more than emissions from the other end, unless we also count the bulls**t which you're spewing).
Tell ya' what, Marshal, since you know so much, how about you tell me about the wine industry in England? See, until such time as English wines start causing French vintners to worry about restricting their importation, I'm gonna insist on seeing the present degree of warming as being well within known, historical patterns (given that the Brits were making wine during both the Roman and Medieval Warmings/Solar Minimums). So far as I know, coal fired powerplants and automobiles were unlikely culprits for those warmings, but that doesn't seem to stop folks like you from raising a stink about our emissions based contributions to global warming and/or "climate change" (an interesting change of terminology, I might note, since virtually nobody disagrees with the notion of "climate change", whereas the notion of "global warming" and, especially, "anthropogenic global warming" are what you people are really trying to sell, but even your side couldn't quite make that one stick, hence the switch to "climate change").
But, what the heck, if you need statistics to back up my assertions, I'm sure I can consult the same references you used and come up with my own. Fantasy, after all, is an easy argument to rebut and you, my friend, are peddling fantasy.
I'm surprised that you were able to decipher his post. Good job on your part.
Hey Oldfarte,,,, That was a good retort. When a BS spewer starts spewing, bury 'em with more BS... And then dare then to rebut your arguments. Love It!!!
Whew! Thank God for that caption - when I first saw that picture, I thought it was a story about the Democrats' National Convention...
And here I thought it was the carnage from the RNC...
This is what you get when you build a city in a bathtub. How many more storms will the taxpayers have to pay to "rebuild" New Orleans?
It is time to condemn the whole city and have the residents relocate to the boarder along Arizona and California. Their mere presence should scare away the illegals.
Killing two birds with one stone.
Doesn't California have enough illiterate bottom-feeding welfare morons already? New Mexico is pretty open. At least they won't get wet.
CA Land Shark - Glad you are paying attention to your geography and know where this is taking place. This is happening in Mississippi, not New Orleans, Louisiana.
Dump some maggots on them and release a few hundred buzzards. They'll be gone in a week.
Does this mean that the deceased critters will be unavailable to vote in November? A major dem voting block taken out by Bush's weather machine.
Don't pop them !
That would let out the creamy goodness.
Throw it in one of those deep fryers, crunchy on the outside, tender on the inside.
Betcha wouldn't even need a fork.