If you can't beat it, eat it. Nutritious nutria: good for you, good for our wetlands. A rat a day saves the Chesapeake Bay.
I'll admit that my slogans need work; but when it comes to nutria, we're all struggling.
Armed mainly with barbecue sauce and appetite, we went to Bivalve last week to fight the good fight, around a grill in a small county park overlooking the vast Dorchester marshes.
Our aim: to set the tone for a public response to the large, marsh-eating rodents that in growing numbers are gnawing at the estuary's precious wetlands.
Some of the guests at last week's first Nanticoke Nutriafest thought our sales pitch would work better if we had not left heads and paws on the 8- to 10-pound carcasses simmering sweetly on the coals.
I knew that some people might be put off by the rat-like skulls and 2-inch, bright-orange buck teeth; or find the tiny-toed front feet and the hairy, webbed hind ones less than appealing. But we needed positive identification. It was the lesser of two evils -- the worser being my chef and main nutria consultant, W. R. Carter III, a longtime biologist with the state of Maryland.
Testimonials abound as to the culinary abilities of Carter, known as "Nick" -- also known as "Mad Dog":
Expect the worst, and you won't be disappointed. Is there anything he won't eat? I thought they used that for bait. Oh my God, he's biting their heads off! (Alternately: Oh my God, he swallowed it live!)
And then there is his dark side. I knew that Carter's last barbecue -- fresh raccoon for some colleagues -- had not been all as advertised. Truly amazing, he remarked afterward; with all those biologists present, no one could tell grilled coon from roadkilled cat.
Still, I knew Nick to be a consummate outdoorsman and wild game aficionado -- and the Nutriafest was his idea anyhow. His agency, Maryland's Department of Natural Resources, has been concerned for years with what to do about myocastor coypu, the nutria. The misnamed creatures (nutria is Spanish for otter), are South America's version of our beaver, with a rat-like tail instead of a paddle tail. They can reach 15-20 pounds, resembling nothing so much as a giant guinea pig.
Considered pests
Originally imported to Louisiana in the 1930s, they escaped, or were released, and have spread into 40 states, including Maryland. Here they are considered pests; they compete with muskrats and destroy marsh by eating the roots of plants.
A series of mild winters in the 1970s first allowed nutria populations around the Chesapeake to soar. But a hard freeze in 1976-1977, combined with a good market for nutria fur, reduced their numbers by an estimated 90 percent.
Poorly adapted to North American winters, nutria huddle together for warmth on rude platforms of vegetation in the open marsh, and those on the outside may slowly freeze.
A few winters ago, a local trapper was on the frozen marsh with his dog, when the animal saw a small patch of fur and attacked. The "patch" erupted in a snarling, biting mass of dozens of nutria, and only several shots fired into the horde extricated the dog, bloody but alive.
During the warm 1980s, nutria rebounded and spread, and as many as 125,000 now roam Maryland marshes, state biologists estimate. Meanwhile, the value of a nutria pelt has fallen from $7.25 to literally nothing, as part of a global decline in fur prices. The only incentives for Maryland nutria trappers are a few small, local markets for meat.
Last year, Maryland game managers failed to sell the legislature on a $2.3 million eradication program that combined bounties with subsidized trapping. Now, after the retirement of nutria-hating Sen. Frederick C. Malkus Jr. of Dorchester County, the best chance seems to lie with eating the rodents into submission. Thus our Nutriafest.
Carter and I included a prebarbecue hunt, but we knew better than to depend on our minimal nutria stalking skills to feed the masses.
Indeed, we found nutria marsh, nutria droppings, nutria tracks, nutria "tail drags" in the mud, and nutria "eat outs," as the areas of destroyed marsh are called -- but nary a nutria.
Wick Lowe was our ace in the hole. If there were a National Register of Authentic Local Places, his little market, upriver from Bivalve in Sharptown, would be on it. Most anything that swims, crawls or hops through Eastern Shore woods and waters, Wick sells or can get: coon, possum, muskrat, herring roe (fresh and frozen), eels, bullfrogs (imported or caught locally); also perch, shad, trout, rockfish, oysters. And nutria.
In one of his freezers, Wick paws first through a top layer of bagged limas, then a layer of turkeys, pushes aside something unidentifiable, and finally hits nutria. Three, four, five. He searches for a sixth, when a big, black object surfaces, shaped like a pingpong paddle. "Beaver," Wick grunts, extracting a bloody 25-pound object. "Same price as a nutria -- $5."
Cook them all just like muskrat, he says. Parboil "with all the onions you can get in the pot," then grill with the sauce of your choice.
The biggest mistake people make with wild game, he advises, "is they want to soak 'em and change the water, again and again, like they want to wash all the wild out of it. The blood is where the taste is."
I meet Carter on the highway to give him the frozen carcasses to parboil at his home before barbecue day. I expect the worst, and am not disappointed when his hound begins gnawing the beaver in the back of Carter's pickup. "Can't hurt it much -- it's hard frozen," he says, driving off. Nor am I disappointed when he shows up to barbecue with two, not five nutria -- his dogs "or something" got into the cook pot overnight and ate the others.
But all is forgiven as the survivors-- two nutria and the beaver -- roast to perfection. The chef also combines beaver tail, nutria, deer sausage, potatoes and carrots in a savory stew. The 20 or so guests pick tentatively at the nutria, and render judgment:
Definitely better than sea duck. Definitely better than muskrat. Fine texture, light in color, not greasy at all. Bland, rabbitlike; could pass for pork.
And something else is happening-- the picking at the meat is less tentative. It is disappearing. People are going back for seconds, and slurping the stew. I think we've got something here.
'Nutria gumbo'
Confirming it, Atlantic Monthly's February issue arrives, with a piece by Calvin Trillin on Louisiana's attempts to gnaw back at the marsh-eating nutria, which number in the millions there. Enlisting the likes of Chef Paul Prudhomme, the state already has completed its second annual nutriafest, with a cook-off won by "apple-smoked nutria and wild mushroom crepe in bourbon-pecan nutria sauce." Trillin says that nutria remind him of rabbit, and foresees a time when: "The airport sells gift packs of nutria sauce piquante, and nutria etouffee and nutria gumbo" and "deep fried cubes of nutria are on [menus] as swamp popcorn. The hind legs would be sent to Chinese restaurants . . . where waiters could point to them on the dim-sum carts and say to Occidental customers, 'You no like?' "
I foresee a second, bigger Bivalve nutriafest, at which Chef Nick says he plans to include his special chicken. But I've seen him eyeing roadkilled buzzards. If you join us, insist your chicken come with feet and head.