invasive species – Gator Girl Art

Hi all y’all!

I was planning to paint a series of animals wearing glasses. I ended up liking the nutria without glasses. I feel like his orange teeth are enough. Also, he has too many problems to also deal with glasses.

Nutria are native to South America. They were sent to Louisiana (and lots of other places) as a way to monetize their pelts. As with other get rich schemes, people gave up on their nutria dream and released them into the bayous and swamps. Now they are an invasive species destroying our wetlands. If you kill a nutria (people like to say harvest) in Louisiana, you can get $6 for his tail. It is always open season. If you want to take a deep dive, there is lots of information about nutrias.

Here is a link to a short video.

I recommend the video, especially if you don’t have dinner plans.

I don’t know if any nutria have had a chance to eat watermelon, but I am sure they would like it. If I saw a nutria and had watermelon with me, I would definitely share.

Their teeth are orange because of a high concentration of iron in their tooth enamel.