RazzyBlog: Daily Dude I Want to Hit: nutria

Friday, May 23, 2008

Daily Dude I Want to Hit: nutria

Name: Myocaster coypus

Aliases: nutria, coypus

DOB: entered fossil record during the Pliocene; introduced to Louisiana in 1930

Hometown: temperate South America

Current residence: various places in Europe, South America, Asia, Maryland, Louisiana, and the Columbia River basin

Why I Want to Hit that Hotness: When I made plans to go visit my friend LL Cool Jew in New Orleans next month, she was regaling me with tales of the turtle soup we're going to eat, and the swamp tours we're taking, and the plantations we're going to, and somehow the topic of nutria came up.

"What's nutria, precious, eh?" I asked her.

She advised me that nutria is a type of beaver-sized swamp rat with big orange teeth that was imported to Louisiana from South America as an inexpensive food source for the cajuns of the bayou. Unfortunately, nutria never really caught on as a dinner meat except for a few places in Louisiana where some rural folks hunt it. It's greatest success at being incorporated into the mainstream Louisiana diet is probably its use as a beef substitute on sloppy joe day in the Louisiana public school system. I'm not sure if that's on the statewide elementary school lunch menu, but (LA native) Motherbucker told me it was a favorite in Alexandria where she came up. I guess the nutria population in southwest Washington state isn't as prolific, because I never heard of nutria being served to anyone. In fact, I hadn't even heard of nutria at all. Even more unfortunately, nutria have proven to be a wetland-destroying menace thanks to their burrowing and ravenous appetites for vegetation.

To battle the nutria problem, the people of Louisiana have tried all sorts of things. Currently the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries offers a bounty on nutria, and is also strongly pushing nutria as the meat of the future. Their website shares recipes for dishes like "heart healthy crock pot nutria," smoked nutria and andouille sausage gumbo, Enola's smothered nutria, and stuffed nutria hindquarters. After hearing about all this, I became extremely curious about trying nutria.

The last time I was home in the P-N-Dub, I was hanging out with my buddy HotLawyer and switching back and forth between the Mariners game and various food and travel shows. After I told HotLawyer what kind of dick vibes all the Mariners and the entire Oakland bullpen were sporting and speculated on which food show hosts were big sluts (Giada de Laurentiis being Queen Skank of Slag Mountain), we settled on watching the Gulf Coast episode of "Bizarre Foods." Unfortunately we switched back to baseball during the nutria-eating part, but just seeing the fat homo who hosts that show eating bear, possum, and chitlins, I became even more dead-set on popping my nutria-eating cherry.

Upon realizing my strong interest in nutria, LL Cool Jew has taken it upon herself to fill me in on any and all nutria information she comes across. She just finished taking a class about Louisiana history (since she works for some Louisiana historical society or something), and there was some discussion of nutria. However, it became apparent that, in terms of nutria being an accepted part of Louisiana culture, it's got a way to go. You can't just walk into any restaurant and order some nutria jambalaya; if you want nutria, you have to get out and trap it yourself. Since the idea of LL Cool Jew and myself traipsing around the bayou trying to set nutria-catching snares is nothing short of hilarious, we have been trying in vain trying to get a nutria hook-up. It seems our best bet will be to find someone who makes nutria jerky and beg them for some. I'm already having fantasies of eating nutria jerky on our way to tour the Britney Spears museum, and I was hoping that LL Cool Jew's Louisiana class would prove a boon to our nutria-acquiring efforts.

Razzy: oh congrats on getting an A in your herstory klass
LL Cool Jew: :D :D :D
Razzy: like you would have gotten anything less
LL Cool Jew: WOOHOO
Razzy: i'm sure it was your presentation about the jewish rice tycoon that secured your top grade
LL Cool Jew: :D
LL Cool Jew: you better believe it
Razzy: the only thing that concerns me
Razzy: is that maybe you didn't work the louisiana history community hard enough for nutria jerky connections
LL Cool Jew: all those people were from the Greatner NO area
LL Cool Jew: they aint got no nutria connex
Razzy: we gots to find some of those
Razzy: i've become almost pathologically obsessed with the idea of consuming nutria

So if any of you know somewhere we can get some pre-trapped and killed (and preferably jerkified) nutria, holler at your girl. In the meantime, here is the greatest nutria video on YouTube. I think the music of Manu Chao was made to be the soundtrack for videos of nutria being nutria, or as LL Cool Jew put it, "it's an awesome nutria jam."