Ecological Warfare

The latest issue of Harper’s offers more tenderhearted stories about more approachable creatures—namely, Tao Lin’s 8,000-word memoir about his three cats. And yet I was enthralled by Nathaniel Rich’s dispatch from the Louisiana Nutria Rodeo, which holds the answer to just about every question one would think to ask about the state’s invasive, Jack Russell-sized rodent. Come for the hunt, to see who bags the biggest rat! Stay for the cook-off, to find out who can improve on Paul Prudhomme’s “nutria popcorn” recipe! But when the Nutria Toss begins, you may want to take a few steps back.

A nutria is approximately the shape of a football but too heavy to throw like one. Among the men who tossed rats in the twelve- to fourteen-pound range, the dominant technique was the discus throw. One gripped the corpse by the tail, spun it around to generate maximum torque, and, if his timing was right, released the rodent at peak centrifugal force. Because many of the contestants had never thrown a discus, let alone a nutria, and since most had been drinking all day, their timing tended to be off. About one in three nutrias hooked wide left, into the crowd, scattering those audience members who weren’t too distracted or impaired to notice. One savvy spectator caught a nutria bare-handed, but he was an exception. An older gentleman took a nutria across the cheek. “Feels like a beanbag,” he marveled, before getting smacked in the face again. A slight, younger fellow in a yellow trucker hat received a nutria in his crotch. Silently, he sunk to his knees, his eyes set in a wince for a very long time.

In the children’s and women’s divisions, for which the lighter carcasses were reserved, a few contestants tried backward, over-the-head tosses. Logan Sawyer, an eleven-year-old visiting from Mobile, Alabama, with his parents and wearing a sheathed hunting knife on his waist, gave considerable thought to technique before deciding that underhand was the way to go. He won the children’s division by at least a dozen nutria lengths. “You just got to commit,” he said. He figured a bunch of his friends would want to come with him to the rodeo next year. Earlier that afternoon, after a drunk on the dock had promised him a hundred dollars, Sawyer captured a pelican, pressing its beak shut between his hands so it couldn’t bite him, and paraded it through the marina.