Nutrias and Monkeys

Last night, after completing a small chunk of the work that had been oppressing me for the last several days, I drove home on fairly empty streets, pulled into the darkened parking lot in my humble corner of student housing, and, once out of my car, walked over to the depressing metal boxes underneath an acorn tree to uncage my mail for the day. In spite of the late hour, there was another person standing nearby looking at what I assumed was his mail.

"Excuse me," the person asked me. He had an accent, so I immediately assumed that he was an international student from an Asian country, perhaps China. "Do you know what kind of animal this is?" He pointed down at large rodent timidly staring at the both of us, shuffling his webbed feet around some loose acorns. The creature's eyes were translucently reflecting a hazy light from a street lamp somewhere.

"Oh," I said, briefly startled, "That is a nutria." The creature was slowly backing up into some hedges, presumably to find a switchblade or some other kind of blade to defend itself with.

"Nyootria," the man repeated, "It looks like a big rat."

"Yeah, they're rodents all right. Way back when, some guy figured that he could sell them for fur, but when nobody bought any, they were released into the wild some time in the thirties. It probably lives in the creek behind this building." The international student was looking at the creature with an intense and interested fascination. I supposed he was wondering if it was dangerous, a thought that amused me.

My personal policy with these sorts of creatures - nutria or raccoons - is to treat them like bees: keep your distance and ignore them. It is extremely unlikely that they'll harm you. Even if, like raccoons, they stand up on their hind legs and menacingly wave their arms at you in a "wax-on wax-off" Karate Kid sort of way. (My younger sister uttered the loudest, most shrill scream I've ever heard in my life when a raccoon actually did just that.) Still, I wondered if the situation was reversed and I was the international student living in China, would have a similar reaction to, say, a monkey? Probably. Although, I think my worry would be more justified; afterall, a monkey might actually have a switchblade hidden somewhere. And I am unused to brawling with monkeys.