Giant carnivorous rats invade Everett
EVERETT, WA. (UP) -- Like something escaped from a mad scientist's laboratory, the monstrous rodents creep through the underbrush.
These rats - some as big as man and weighing more than 200 pounds -- are nutria gigantia, roaming Snohomish County as the result of commercialism gone to seed.
"I saw this humongous rat," said Dan Gorgonzola, who encountered a nutria gigantia in an alley. "My jaw just dropped and I wet my pants."
The nutria gigantia are the remnants of a get-rich-quick scheme of some 40 years ago, said Bill Kern, urban wildlife specialist with the Snohomish County Cooperative Extension Service.
Entrepreneurs imported nutria gigantia -- an extremely large South American aquatic rat -- to start a fur trade in Everett. Their size was dramatically increased through selective breeding. But people didn't want to walk around in coats or mittens made of the hide or fur of 6-foot-long rats with naked, scaly tails.
The nutria gigantia found homes along lakes, drainage ditches and ponds at dairy farms. Their diet is extremely diverse, and they take advantage of whatever is available, including other rodents, rabbits, birds, insects, and fruit. They sometimes eat domestic animals and have even been known to attack humans. Much of their winter diet is carrion. Females breed between January and March and produce an average of six young.
The nutria gigantia are not considered game animals, so it's always open season on them. Just don't expect to get rich as a trapper: A nutria gigantia pelt might fetch $4, Kern said.
