I did finish the 2 crocheted scraves yesterday, and am going to be playing with my new digital camera and doing mostly household chores today so I don't have any artsy photos to share with you this time. I dug into my photo archives, though, and found some pictures of these rather odd little creatures who reside near Ron's work...

They are Nutria...mom and young-un. Wow! Look at those orange teeth! They look like a vague cousin of the beaver, don't they? We did some checking, and found that the word "nutria" means "otter" in Spanish, and that Nutria are native to portions of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Uruguay and are not indigenous to the State of Oregon.

Through more research, we found that hopeful investors started small captive colonies of Nutria in several locations in the United States, Canada, and many European countries in the 1930's. Even though the Nutria meat was low in cholesterol and high in protein and their fur abundant due to their size and high reproductive potential, the farms did not succeed. Do you think this was maybe because it was difficult for people to eat meat and/or use fur from an animal looking somewhat like a large rat? The animals either escaped or were intentionally released into the wild, which resulted in the wild populations present today in the U.S, Canada and Europe. And that is all I know about that! :~)