Pet nutria discussed at "In Your Own Backyard" lecture

The University of Louisiana at Lafayette's Center for Cultural and Eco-Tourism is presenting the "In Your Own Backyard" lecture series at the Vermilionville Performance Center every second Tuesday of the month for the second year in a row. 

Jennifer Ritter, the assistant director of UL Lafayette Center for Cultural and Eco-Tourism,  said she came up with the idea for the lecture series because the Center's annual tourism conference was not drawing nearly as much of a crowd as it used to, even though she said, "the quality of the event was still very solid and growing." 

"So," she said, "I decided if we did a standard series, standard by day and location, we'd probably be more successful."

The lectures, Ritter explained, are meant to be "a conversation, a dialogue between speakers and the audience. The speakers aren't selected because they're experts in their field, but because they can convey a sense of closeness to the topic."

The first lecture of the spring semester, which was held Jan. 12, was all about Louisiana hunting and trapping in the "old days."

Led by naturalist Jim Delahoussaye and brothers James and Mark Hebert,  it was actually less of a lecture than it was a conversation about the brothers' childhood spent catching wildlife in Bayou Lafourche with their father and grandfather in the 1970s.

The presentation included a table full of pelts donated by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. The pelts came from a variety of Louisiana animals, including fox, beaver, river otter, mink, bobcat, muskrat, opossum and, of course, nutria. The brothers talked about the catching and skinning of these animals, and explained that although such things are largely frowned upon by today's society, it was just a way of life to them, and a good way to make a few extra bucks.

"Basically what we caught were nutria, raccoon, some muskrat and some mink," Mark Hebert said, "and we'd get $6 to $8 for a big one."

"And that was good spending money when you were a kid," James Hebert added.

The brothers also had with them a couple of old-fashioned traps, and James Hebert demonstrated the way the bear trap works using a large pole.

Mark Hebert also demonstrated how he used to trap painted buntings, colorful birds that fly into Louisiana from Cuba and Mexico in April. He said many trappers used to catch them as pets, although that is illegal now.

The trap was a triangular birdcage with one wall held open by two sticks carefully stuck together. A fake painted bunting is hung inside the cage to attract the territorial males, and when the bird hits the two sticks, they fall, leaving the spring-loaded wall to swing closed on him.

The most talked about animal at the lecture was the nutria. Not only did the presenters have many personal stories to tell about the creatures, but many of the audience members did as well.

Mark Hebert explained how the nutria originally came from Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia around the '30s, and Delahoussaye shocked the audience by saying "they make really good pets!"

Delahoussaye told the story of Unk (named after the moaning sound that all the trappers in the room could attest to nutria making), a nutria that he took in and raised from a newborn, who became just as much a member of the family as any dog could.

"They know their names, they come when you call them and they attack anyone who comes to your house," Delahoussaye said. "They love to play all the time. They'll flip over on their backs and want you to rub their stomachs."

Delahoussaye had to say good bye to Unk when he moved but was able to find him a home with another person who owned a nutria. This other nutria was a female, and naturally, the two hit it off very well.

"The other nutria came out, they touched noses and they took off under the bed as fast as they could go," he said.

Besides being good pets, another thing nutria are apparently good for is food.

Mark Hebert said a friend of his once made him try nutria jerky.

"I thought it would be like teriyaki or something, but he hadn't seasoned it, and it was just that straight nutria taste. It brought back all those memories of waking up at 5 a.m. freezing and picking up those poor nutria.

"It wasn't the greatest taste. Maybe y'all have had better experiences with it than me," he told the audience. The lecture quickly dissolved into a 30-people discussion about the best ways to cook nutria.

Delahoussaye said he had also tried eating nutria, but admitted, "It's hard for me to eat it after Unk." 

One member of the audience asked the brothers if their trapping adventures in the bayou ever put them in danger of alligators.

"Alligators never really bothered us too much," James Hebert answered.

"You'd go out at night and see a hundred golden little eyes, but they'd never mess with you. An alligator would see you going by and just sort of give you passage," Mark Hebert added.

Alligators were also never a problem for Delahoussaye, who said when he was little seeing an alligator was incredibly rare. He explained that alligators had been hunted so much in the early 1900s that they had actually become endangered, and it wasn't until laws started being passed to protect the creatures that they began coming back.

All three speakers stressed to the audience that despite their childhood hobbies, they were not advocating the trapping and killing of animals. Society's views on the subject of hunting and trapping have changed since the 1970s, and the fur trade has become less and less profitable, leaving most people no reason to trap anymore, anyway.

"I don't mind, really," James Hebert said about the slow decline of this cultural tradition. "I hated waking up at 5 a.m. in the morning to deal with smelly nutria."

The "In Your Own Backyard" lecture series will continue on Feb. 9 with a presentation by Barry Ancelet, Ph.D., on "North American Processional Rituals," which Ritter said discusses "French processional rituals that either mirror our Mardi Gras tradition, lead into a Mardi Gras tradition or in other ways are related to the Mardi Gras season."