Sunday, May 29, 2016

#1 Oddities!


10 comments:

Chic Silber said...


The South American Nutria

is also known as a river rat

It is however a vegetarian

I think Jenny Vidbel has 1

Jim Alexander said...

I remember Bobby Gibbs' talking them in to see "the Giant Killer Rats from the Moscow Sewers". Has Chic mentioned, they were nutria or sometimes called coypu. It was a small unit mounted on the truck that pulled a Manuel King Snake Show.

Anonymous said...

Dory Miller had a pit show like this on the Kelly Miller Show in 1964.

Bob Karczewski said...

I remember a pit show that traveled with the "Happyland Shows" carnival that played Traverse City for years as I was growing up. The pit show was at the fair in Traverse City, MI and called them "Giant Man Eating Rats". I saw that exhibit the summer of 1964 when I was in high school. Jim Elliot could tell us more about the "Happyland Shows". The owners of that carnival operation lived in Grosse Pointe, and were clients of my Great Uncle who was a dentist in Grosse Pointe.

Chic Silber said...


I think they're only called

that Jim when served roasted

on a skewer with hot sauce

Unknown said...

Jenny Vidbel has had a capybara on Big Apple in recent years, not a nutria. A capybara ia quite a bit larger and is found in South America. Nutrias do breed in the wild in parts of the U.S.

Bob Good

GaryHill said...

Bobby had one on Carson and Barnes I visited .

Richard Reynolds said...

The late Chuck Meltzer wrote a nice paper about these so-called giant rat shows. It was published in Bandwagon. I believe he said he had eaten nutria and that it was not bad.

Chic Silber said...


A friend of my wife's was

given a Nutria fur coat

that her husband was told

was a cousin of the Mink

I saw the coat which was

very nice but not as fine

a fur by any stretch

Maybe the Ermine is close

but not the Nutria

Chic Silber said...


Like I joked earlier Richard

when roasted on a skewer &

served with hot sauce they

probably taste like chicken