The Hunt

WARNING: If you are an extreme animal rights activist, or if you happen to be President of the Nutria Society, I would advise you to stop reading right now. Bye-Bye. If you have a weak stomach and/or don't want to read about the grisly details of eliminating Nutria, you are excused now. Go. Before it gets ugly.

If you are still reading...Welcome. Hopefully you despise Nutria as much as we do. Or maybe you just want to read about our adventures with them. Nutria are useless rat-like nocturnal creatures that visit us each and every night and leave POO all over our lawn. The same lawn that our children like to run, frolic, and play on. And it's not your run-of-the-mill POO. It's the most DISGUSTING, SLIMY, STANKY, STINKY POO that has ever been produced by man or beast. I'm not saying I'm a POO expert, I'm just saying that in 41 (almost 42...gasp!) years I've never seen the likes of it.

Hank has had about enough of cleaning up after these horrid beasts (bless his soul.) He has decided to take matters into his own hands. He got a trap and baited it with carrots, the "people food" of choice for Nutria.

The first few nights, they were somehow able to get the carrots, leave us some juicy morsels of disgustingness, and not get stuck in the trap. That was it. Hank declared all out war. He got his comfy comforter and set up his post as night watchman by the window. The hunt was on.

( OK, I cheated. I took the pictures the next morning.)

So I'm fast asleep at about 4:00 a.m. and I wake up to the gut wrenching sound of "THUNK THUNK" You don't want any more details, I'm pretty sure. I lay there for a few minutes trying to get my bearings. Then it dawns on me what I just heard. Ohhhhh. Grosssss. Then I couldn't get back to sleep. After about a half hour I went downstairs to see what was going on. I found Hank at the computer reading about how to dispose of a dead Nutria. (He didn't find anything useful.) I finally fell back asleep at about 6:00 a.m. I dreamed of disturbing things. Really disturbing. I think I need a therapist.

Anyway, this is probably only the beginning. 2 down, 200 more to go. We can eat an elephant one nutria at a time. Or something like that. (shudder)

This is the lovely sight our children got to experience on their way to the bus stop this morning.

Don't look too close...it's sick. Am I'm pretty sick to be posting it here. I know. You can't say you weren't warned. I needed to share my pain. Hank is coming home at lunch time to bury them down by the pond. That's what the fish and wildlife people said to do.