Giant swamp rats are poised to dig into California. Should we eat 'em?

Filipa Ioannou

It's been about a month since California wildlife officials started sounding the alarm on nutria, invasive South American rodents that look like enormous, 20-pound rats and have the power to devastate wetlands. They're making a comeback after being eradicated in the 1970s and have been spotted in Stanislaus, Fresno, Tuolumne and Merced counties so far.
"We didn't know at first if it was a small, isolated population," California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesman Peter Tira told the Chronicle in February. "But it became clear that it's a breeding population, and they're reaching major waterways where they can move."
It was only a matter of time until someone suggested eating them.
A recent article on tech news site The Verge, entitled "The case for eating California's giant invasive rodents," broached the topic, pointing out that nutria "apparently taste great in jambalaya."
What's so bad about letting the nutria do their thing in the wild, anyway? Like many of their fellow Californians, they are devoted vegetarians; nutria have so voracious an appetite for the plants that populate wetlands that they are capable of shifting the balance of areas where they live into uninhabitable, overly salty dead zones, wildlife officials say.
They also pose problems for infrastructure, burrowing into dikes, levees and roadbeds, Tira told KCRA...more

So why not trap'em and eat'em? You best not, because that would be illegal in California:

As for now, trapping and eating nutria is illegal in California, because it's against the law to have an invasive species in your possession, according to the California Department of Fish andrden Wildlife.

Keep those traps and forks holstered, or you'll have the game warden at your door.
Say, I wonder if its legal to neuter nutria in Ca.? Nutria nuts, that's the answer. Exquisite cuisine for Ca. liberals. Nutria fries. Sierra Madre oysters. A Rodent Rodeo to SAVE THE WETLANDS!!