Well, it's been a while since I've weighed in on WalMart, but they really do seem to be an endless source of blog fodder, that's for sure. The latest is a Louisiana woman who's suing Wall-e because she was scared by a nutria that she maintains employees let run loose. (Source: AP article seen on boston.com.)
Not familiar with the nutria, the ragin' cajun rodent with the yellow-y orange-y buck teeth? Well, they have their very own website, courtesy of Louisiana's Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, where I learned that the first nutrias were imported from South America in the 1930's in hopes of building up a fur industry. The fur industry never materialized, perhaps because folks were a bit skittish about wearing rodent pelts, and the nutrias somehow made their way into the Lousiana wetlands, which they are ravaging.
To help with the wetland ravaging, I do believe that some Louisianans tried to get people to eat these little critters. I seem to recall a while back Chef Paul Prudhomme was cooking up some mighty tasty nutria dishes, which might just be the most stomach roiling food idea coming from that state since the turducken.
But, as so often happens, I digress.
As it happens, along with ravaging the wetlands, and substituting for chicken in gumbo, nutrias - at least in the Abbeville, LA WalMart outpost - have taken on a new role as store pet.
Sure, I suppose the nutria could have just found its way into the store that very day, drawn like every other shopper by the bright lights and low prices. But Rebecca White claims that employees absolutely knew there was a nutria on the loose, and had even given it a name, Norman.
When White was pushing her shopping cart down an aisle, Stormin' Norman appeared from behind a rack. The startled White, "in a panicked attempt to protect herself" pulled her laden cart over her foot, injuring her foot and back. She is seeking "compensation for pain, suffering, mental anguish, fear, disabling injuries, and medical expenses," including a bill for surgery she required.
Who knows where this one will end up, but I wouldn't want to be the employee of the Abbeville WalMart who named the little beast instead of calling an exterminator and/or the Louisiana Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. I don't imagine the Bentonville will look to kindly on one of their low wage peons, errrr associates, out in the hustings deciding that a nutria - with or without vest - would make a good greeter.
I can count the number of times I've been in a WalMart on one finger, maybe two.
There aren't all that many around here to begin with, and, as a carless city girl, I have no desire to rev on out of town looking for one. And even if I were to go WalMarting, this is Massachusetts, and the likelihood that a nutria would leap out at me from behind the everyday low price rack of football jerseys, or be seen lurking behind the boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese, is truly remote.
Still, if I do need another reason to stay out of WalMart, nutrias on the loose is on the list.
2 comments:
Certainly keeping a nutria in a store is problematic... but i have a hard time believing anybody from Abbeville could be so shocked by the sight of one that they would suffer great "mental anguish" to the point of needing to sue over it. In an area where giant cockroaches, snakes, and gators are common, a nutria is downright cute and fluffy.
Having gotten used to frogs jumping over my feet in the backyard at dusk, giant flying beetles bonking into my head in the backyard, gators in suburban ponds, and other close-to-nature treats of the Gulf Coast - where there are just a lot of little living things everywhere, even in the city - it's just a little hard to believe that anybody in this general region could be that shocked and horrified.
Not that keeping one in a store is a great idea... but seems to me there's an element of lawyers gone wild to this one.
In Massachusetts you would encounter rats, mice, bats and birds. :)
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