Josh Harder: “People see swamp rats all the time roaming the halls of D.C., but I believe this is actually the first time in American…”

“People see swamp rats all the time roaming the halls of D.C., but I believe this is actually the first time in American history that we have a taxidermied swamp creature on the actual floor of the House of Representatives. This here is my good friend, Nellie the Nutria. She has nacho-cheese colored teeth, can weigh up to 40 pounds, she can eat 25 percent of her body weight every single day, and she has an exponential rate of growth. She may look cute to some people, but Nellie and her friends are a real menace, and farmers across California's Central Valley and residents of the Louisiana swamp can tell you, too, how serious of a threat these giant swamp rats pose. Nutria can destroy crops, irrigation canals, wetlands and native species. And their exponential growth rate makes them a real problem. One female, like Nellie here, can lead to 200 offspring in a single year. The State of California estimates that if we don't do something about this problem, there are going to be 250,000 nutria in our State within the next 5 years. Nellie's family in Louisiana have already caused an immense amount of damage over the last 100 years. And my Republican colleagues on this bill, Mr. Graves and Mr. McClintock, can attest to the real havoc these swamp rats cause. My bill would simply revive a program that the State of Maryland used to almost entirely eliminate the infestation in the Chesapeake Bay, where Nellie here came from originally.…”