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Denny and Myra Lacoste told a Louisiana newspaper reporter last week all about their rodent, Neuty, who they rescued two years ago. The animal, a coypu, had since become part of their family and something of a local celebrity.
The 22-pound “water rat” liked to stick her head out of Denny’s pickup truck like a beagle, they told the Times-Picayune. He was primarily vegetarian, but was sometimes given Popeye’s fried chicken as a reward. He had been named the official mascot of Bayou 95.7, a New Orleans rock and roll radio station.
On Thursday, a day after the story was published, officials from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries showed up at the Lacostes’ fish store in Metairie, a Louisiana suburb of New Orleans. Wildlife agents told them that state law prohibits people from owning nutria, a semiaquatic rodent that the department said has “caused significant damage to the state’s shoreline, crops and swamps.” They had come to confiscate the animal, which is considered an invasive species in Louisiana.
Although Neuty wasn’t there – the Lacostes’ son had taken him away – the agents said they would be back.
The threat of losing her pet sparked a 33-hour fight to keep Neuty, one that involved lawyers and thousands of Neuty fans, urging state officials to back down. It worked. A day after citing the Lacostes and demanding that Neuty be taken over, wildlife officials issued them a special permit allowing them to keep him as long as they follow certain regulations.
“I think that’s a good conclusion for all parties,” Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary Jack Montoucet said in a statement on Friday.
The Lacostes adopted Neuty in December 2020. That month, Denny drove alongside a canal on his way to work. Ahead of us, Denny spotted Roadkill, pulled over, got out and discovered a nutria mother and several of her offspring had been crushed to death. But he also found a survivor crying. He picked it up and took it home, where his wife used a syringe to feed the orphan cat’s milk.
Life was good for Neuty for the next two years. His paw, which had been run over and crushed in the loss of his family, finally healed. He bathed in the Lacoste’s swimming pool. He became part of the family and joined their dogs, Shelley, a 13-year-old Chihuahua Dachshund mix, and Moose, a 5-year-old English Golden Retriever.
“He thinks he’s her. He sits on both of his hind legs for treats, just like dogs do,” Myra said in an interview.
In July, he became the radio station’s official mascot. Capitalizing on Neuty’s growing fame, Myra created a TikTok account in December and posted videos of Neuty swimming in the pool, wearing a Mardi Gras hat and sipping on a bedtime snack of apples, kiwis, cucumbers, corn on the cob and Cookie Crisp granola .
Owning a nutria has not been free of challenges. About a year ago, Myra wanted to start her Mercedes, only to have the car’s sensors go haywire. After towing it to a shop, a mechanic told her that a rodent had chewed through the wiring. The cost of the repair: $1,400.
“I said, ‘That’s it, you go back to the canal,’” she joked.
When animal welfare officers showed up at the fish store looking for him on Thursday, Denny told them that while the rodent often accompanied him to work, it wasn’t there at the moment. Denny tried to call his son but couldn’t get him to pick up. Before leaving empty-handed, agents advised the family that they were keeping a wild animal without a permit.
Native to South America and imported to Louisiana for their fur, coypues have bred near the state’s coastal waterways for nearly a century, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. When the fur trade collapsed in the 1940s, thousands of coypu were released or released. Their numbers exploded and dug under levees, levees and ditches for decades, weakening and sometimes destroying parts of the state’s flood control system. The escalating damage prompted the state in 2002 to create a bounty program to encourage hunters and trappers to kill up to 400,000 each year.
On Thursday night, wildlife agents tried again to apprehend Neuty, this time turning up at the family home, the Lacostes said. Denny and Myra told agents they still don’t have Neuty and don’t know where their son is. Although the agents again left without the nutria, the Lacostes expected them to return the next day.
“I almost couldn’t stop crying just knowing I was going to lose this pet. All I knew was that they would take him away. We’ll never see him again. We were just devastated,” Myra said.
When the Lacostes arrived at the fish store at 7 a.m. the next morning, their attorney was waiting. And when the wildlife agents showed up at 8:15 a.m., the attorney spoke to them. The agents left saying they would get warrants, the Lacostes said.
Word has gotten around about the fight for Neuty. On Friday, someone started a petition on Change.org to stop being “ripped away from the only family he knows.” Within hours, 17,400 people had signed it.
Meanwhile, lawyers representing the Lacostes were talking about reaching a compromise with ministry officials. When all was said and done, the state relented and offered to give the Lacostes special permission to keep Neuty. In exchange, the family promised to take him to the vet regularly and agreed to build a department-approved enclosure behind the fish store where Neuty must stay all workday. And employees and customers are forbidden to touch it.
The Lacostes are happy to concede because it means they can keep Neuty. But, they added, officials have asked them to warn people that owning a nutria is a lot of work.
“He’s as cute as can be. He loves us to death,’ said Myra, ‘but we don’t try to encourage -‘
Denny jumped in with a more direct message.
“We’ll never have one again.”
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