My first viewing of a coypu!

[Nicos]

As I was driving along this afternoon, less than 5 mins from my house, I spotted a large , hunched back cat-like creature with a long thin tail ambling across the road between 2 cornfields.
Then it dawned on me... it was a coypu!

Never seen one in the flesh before... Bit like a giant guinea pig with a long tail!
looked like this....

[VirginVegGrower]

Oooh - are they a problem? Never heard of them before...off to google!

[veggiechicken]

Looks like one of Feral's wombats with a stuck-on tail
Just goggled them and it says they eat 25% of their weight daily - I can relate to that

[scarey55]

Brilliant! We have a family who live near us on the river. When it gets really cold they come up on the bank to feed. They are lovely, trouble is - my dog does like to chase them!

[roitelet]

Watch it, apparently they burrow and will take the root veg from underneath!!!!! The mystery of the disappearing carrots?

[Feral007]

No, a wombat is like a tank, a furry one, but a tank all the same. Nothing cute about them. Well not much anyways

[Jeanied]

I once saw one in East Anglia when I was young - I was most struck by its orange front teeth!

[veggiechicken]

No, a wombat is like a tank, a furry one, but a tank all the same. Nothing cute about them. Well not much anyways

Wombats to me are always called Wendy and Willie and are part of the TreeHouse family Toonhound - Tingha and Tucker Club (1962-1970). I admit I was a bit old to be watching children's puppet shows but it was so funny because of the things that went wrong. I still laugh at the memory of a man, on his hands and knees, one arm up in the air stuffed into a wombat puppet, crawling along between Wendy and Willie's beds, then looking up aghast when he realised he could be seen on TV......... but I digress

[PyreneesPlot]

They are down here too.
The first time we noticed them in a field we'd only been here three weeks. First thought - hells bells the otters are big round here They were quite a long way away...

[Jardiniere]

We saw some years ago but there don't seem to be any anymore....rats yes.

[Snadger]

Bloke round ere got prosecuted for killing what he thought was a large rat!

It turns out it was a coypu and they are protected.

Sorry to say, it just looks like a ginormous rat to me as well!

[Llamas]

You don't see them anymore because there was a huge eradication effort to rid the country of them. The cuddly blighters push out native species, undermine river banks and over graze the surrounding areas.

Scroll down to the last paragraph

Non-native species - Norfolk Biodiversity Partnership Website

[Nicos]

We live in a small conservation area with a river running through it.
There are several very rare plants and water species living in or by the river.

These coypu are not good news for our local environment so although I was thrilled to finally see one, the fact it was ambling across the road in the middle of the day doesn't bode well does it?

[veggiechicken]

, the fact it was ambling across the road in the middle of the day doesn't bode well does it?

Not if there are fast cars...........

[BertieFox]

Coypu or 'ragondins' are dreadful pests however cute they look. We tolerated them for some time until we realised they were destroying every water lily we ever planted in our pond, as well as bullrushes, arum lilies and much more. Then they crept up into the veg garden from the river and munched their way through all the red cabbages which had just hearted up, right down to the stumps.
If that's not bad enough, they tunnel in the river banks so that the surface collapses and is making it likely that the pond next to the river will empty out into the river in the not too distant future.
They are more closely related in their habits to rats, rather than beavers, and multiply just as fast. One of our large dogs was bitten on the nose by one and had to have injections and stitches, and they are reputed to carry Weil's disease.
So we are now trapping them and killing them as often as we can. They are an alien species which compete with other local wildlife.
It's not their fault but they are now endemic in Europe and the UK is SO lucky that they were eradicated in East Anglia.