Neuty, the celebrated pet nutria “was getting pretty antsy” during his national television debut, according to his keeper, Myra Lacoste. To prevent the 22-pound rodent from squirming in her husband arms, she fed him boiled crawfish claws, followed by a dog biscuit.
As long as Neuty was chewing, he presumably could contain his stage fright during his Thursday night appearance, via satellite, on the Fox News "Tucker Carlson Tonight" show.
Standing nervously in the yard of their Bucktown home, Myra and Denny Lacoste looked something like the classic painting “American Gothic,” with a big, brown rodent in place of a pitchfork.
Early in the interview, Carlson paused to ensure he was pronouncing the word nutria properly. “Is it NUtria or nuTRIA,” he asked. The Lacostes assured him that the former is correct.
When the Lacostes described Neuty’s preferred diet of sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, Popeyes fried chicken and pancakes, Carlson laughed. “I’ve got a similar diet actually, and I’m not even a rodent,” he said.
Carlson’s brow knit as the Lacostes described Neuty’s proclivity for chewing up electrical wires around the house. It’s one of the reasons that nutrias are decidedly not ideal pets, they explained.
Indeed, nutria are large, amphibious rodents, originally from South America, that were once raised for their soft brown pelts. Escapees have colonized coastal areas around the country, exacerbating coastal erosion in Louisiana and elsewhere by burrowing and nibbling swamp plants.
Neuty was an orphan that the Lacostes raised as a pet. They were unaware that keeping the web-footed, rat-tailed, orange-toothed critter is against the law, until state Wildlife and Fisheries officials arrived to seize him in March. Public outcry and political intervention prevented Neuty from being taken away, and the ordeal transformed the humble rodent into a sort of tongue-in-cheek folk hero and media marvel.
Carlson, known as a arch-conservative commentator, seemed momentarily to politicize his meeting with Neuty when he thanked the Lacostes for “bravery in the face of state interference.”
But mostly, the segment was simply a send-up of Lacostes’ affection for their affable swamp rat.
