Rented a documentary in iTunes called Rodents of Unusual Size (tagline: They DO exist). So, yeah, they got me on the Princess Bride reference but also on the basic premise of the doc. It’s about the (very large) rodents called Nutria that are an invasive species in Louisiana (and elsewhere across the world, as it turns out). I’d heard about this before and the people who hunted them so gave this short (1 hour and change) doc a shot.
And, yes, it explains that nutria were brought up from South America during the Great Depression as a cheap yet quality source of fur. But (of course) they got loose and had no natural predators that could keep up with their breeding (only gators and there aren’t enough of them to keep the population in check). For awhile, people were able to hunt them for fur… but then the 80s hit and Fur is Murder and that killed the market. Soon there were tens of millions of rodents running running around an no incentive for people to hunt them.
This movie explains that the government has put a hit out on the rodents… a $5 bounty per nutria tail. This supplements some of the folk down there… when they aren’t crabbin’ and crawfishin’, they can go out on airboats and shoot some (very large) varmints. The film follows the hunters, wild life rangers, fur merchants, fashion designers, and chefs (who try to sell the meat which isn’t so easy).
Is this interesting? Well, I was fascinated up to a point. I don’t think there was enough to say about nutria for an 1 hr 7min doc so it did have a problem repeating itself. And then, at one point, it kind of decided to ignore the rodents and just talk about the Cajun lifestyle. Including the party-time preacher who spends his days trolling along the swamp blessing partiers. None of this was boring, but it did start to get a little long.
So, umm… if you are the kind of person endlessly fascinated by very large rodents, the hunting of very large rodents, the skinning of very large rodents…. and, hey, who isn’t? Then this might be the doc for you. Maybe?
Score: 76