BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — After a lot public outcry, state officers now say they may let a Louisiana couple preserve a 22-pound nutria — a beady-eyed, orange-toothed, rat-tailed rodent generally thought-about a wetlands-damaging pest — as a pet that frolics with their canine, snuggles of their arms and swims within the household pool.
The Louisiana Division of Wildlife and Fisheries, in an announcement Friday, stated Myra and Denny Lacoste are being allowed to use for a allow to allow them to legally preserve Neuty the Nutria of their New Orleans house, The Occasions-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported. Montoucet stated particulars of the allow are being finalized.
The announcement got here after greater than 17,000 individuals signed an internet petition demanding that the state go away Neuty and his household alone.
“I believe it is a good conclusion for all sides,” Louisiana Division of Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary Jack Montoucet stated.
The rodent has been dwelling with the Lacostes for greater than two years. The wildlife division initially stated Thursday that it had organized for the animal to be transported to the Baton Rouge Zoo, citing state legislation banning the possession of a nutria, which is taken into account an invasive species. However after the response, the company offered particular situations permitting the household to maintain the nutria as a pet throughout the legislation, in keeping with the newspaper.
“We’re past ecstatic,” Myra Lacoste stated.
Denny Lacoste encountered the injured animal in 2020 when its siblings had been killed in site visitors. He and his spouse hand-fed the animal till it was capable of eat by itself. Then they reared it as a pet.
Now, the animal is a social media star, featured in TikTok movies and seen in a New Orleans Occasions-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate video being held lovingly by Denny Lacoste, scampering throughout a flooring with a towel and chomping down on a uncooked crawfish. Lacoste informed the newspaper that Neuty even likes to experience within the automobile together with his head out the window.
Myra Lacoste stated she and her husband conceded to a number of stipulations, together with common veterinary checkups and maintaining it caged when on the household’s seafood enterprise, so as preserve their pet.
Nutria had been launched into North America greater than a century in the past, and they’re thought-about a nuisance invasive species in Louisiana. Their urge for food for wetlands vegetation and their burrowing into levees hinder flood management, hurt agriculture and contribute to coastal wetlands loss. At numerous occasions public officers have put bounties on them and inspired searching of them for his or her pelts and even for meals.
They’re typically derided as “nutria rats.” But they’ve additionally develop into such a well-recognized a part of Louisiana panorama and lore {that a} New Orleans minor league baseball workforce as soon as employed actors in costume as larger-than life caricatures of the creatures as mascots — Boudreaux and Clotilde.
Now that the ordeal is over, Myra Lacoste stated, “We’re anxious to carry him and smooch on him.”
