Nutrias Don't Wear Flippers
Oregon snorkeler mistaken for rodent, shot in face. That is an actual news headline and there is no way I'm coming up with anything better than that. News people must live for days like this. Going out on a fairly routine call, snorkeler shot in the water, blah blah, but then as a bonus you get a 60 year-old, dope smoking, pill popping shooter who states in his defense that he thought the snorkeler was a giant rodent, or in fact just an average sized nutria, which is an introduced South American specie of rodent, brought to Louisiana in the 40s for some ill-conceived reason, and now has pretty much taken over that state. Nutria-glamorizing ad campaigns which have tried to convince the Louisiana populous that nutrias are tasty (try some nutria chili), or fashionable (dawling, I love your full length nutria), have mostly fallen flat.
At some point, the Louisiana nutria, hunted to near extinction (not even close) and convinced that they would never defeat Sheriff Harry Lee, began a campaign of their own entitled Run for your Life. The general consensus among the Louisiana nutria was that their homeland, Argentina, was just too far away and also fearing ridicule for the curious version of French they now spoke, they headed to the closest destination where people also spoke a curious dialect, East Texas. Of course that went badly, as Texans are a very gun-friendly people, and also none of the younger nutria wanted to give up their sexier hybrid French language for that curious language being spoken in Texas. Oklahoma proved not much better. Kansas, forget about it, so in time they made their way to Oregon,which was believed to be more progressive.
But the snorkeler incident has raised some fears in the Oregon nutria community that there may be a backlash effect and that the heretofore environmentally-evolved Oregonian may take to the Louisiana model of nutria slaughtering so that the question of mistaking a nutria for an even more beloved Oregon specie, the snorkeler, becomes a moot question indeed. There is even rumor that focus groups have begun to address the difficult issue. It is generally agreed that slogans are an effective way to sell a pogrom campaign to a hesitant public and some of the suggested slogans so far considered are--Love a Snorkeler, Kill a Nutria. It's Just a Rodent, So eRATicatem. Nutrias Are Not My Friends, But Snorkelers Are. My Dad Is Not a Nutria. Nutrias Don't Wear Flippers. On a Clear Day You Can See Sea Anemone. Some Fish Fly But How Many Nutrias Snorkel? To Sir With Love. Mission Accomplished.
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