The day before yesterday, I was lucky enough to meet this cute little fellow. Not very shy, but incredibly clean, he groomed himself extensively and wasn’t bothered by my presence. This tameness probably led to them ending up on dinner tables quite often in the past – especially in the USA and East Germany, where nutria and muskrat were apparently frequently on the menu. I’m not sure I could handle that, but you hear everywhere that they’re multiplying too rapidly and destroying riverbanks. These pictures are a comic strip:
Merry Christmas!



They are becoming a nuisance in many places and last Sunday, when I was out in Hainburg hunting kingfishers (just for the photo), there was at least one nutria in every small pond. At first we thought (Thomas was with us) that it was always the same, but the differences were quickly identified. As the first one appeared at the old beaver den and also dived right in front of it, we had to ask the internet whether we were seeing a real beaver after all. In the end, it wasn’t a black nose, the ears stick out too far and the white whiskers plus the rat tail and yellow teeth showed that it was nutrias that were up to their mischief there.


