You Say Tomato, I Say... Rat

First I see the dog.

Secluded riverbed path along the River Arno

It is frenetically running up and down the Arno River bank, barking incessantly, chasing some ghost.
Usually, you see unleashed dogs strolling in the evening with their human companions along the lower riverbed paths, away from the hustle and bustle of Italian city life. It’s a peaceful place, since the Arno is some 400 meters wide in central Florence, and it is still.
But there are no humans with this small, black dog.
And he is quite out of his mind.

As I draw closer I see them. In the water, swimming some 5 to 10 meters off shore, three overgrown…. rats.

They look about a half-meter long, including tails that leave ripples behind them.
And there is an animal chasing them through the water – another small dog with a strong dog paddle stroke.
Clearly, his unnerved partner on shore wishes he were giving chase in the water, too. Hence the noise.
It is a futile effort. Every time the Michael Phelps of the Arno closes in on a rat, it dives underwater, ne’er to reappear.

About a week later, in the pre-twilight, I am walking along the Arno with some backpackers, one French, the other German. When I say walking with them, I mean we are strolling in a loose group, as we have already established they do not speak English well and I only took one semester of French in college. German, nein.
Then the French woman begins squealing and pointing.

A nutria dining on the River Arno

And there they are, those… rats.
“Not rats!” says the French Animal Lover, shaking her head vigorously, as the German man pulls out a long-lens camera.
“How you say… I no know word,” she continues as the German Photographer and I begin snapping images.
One rat is swimming about a meter offshore while the other is dining on some river greens. The French Animal Lover swears she sees a “be-be”, too.
The German Photographer shakes his head, struggling for the English word for these creatures, which – up close – look furry, benign and, well, cute.
“Not rat,” he manages.

Just up the river is the “beach party café,” where you can rent a riverside lounger and order a drink next to a dam that seems to attract every beer bottle and plastic container in Florence. Charming is not a word I’d use for this tourist trap.

Riverside Florence, with tourist sunbathing spot in foreground.

But the “rats” add another dimension that convinces me I’ll never patronize that joint.

I take my images home and turn to Google.
And the word that comes up in my searches to identify this creature is… nutria.
The South American native is a large, herbivorous, semi-aquatic rodent that some ecologists vilify because it eats the stems of plants, but not all the greenery.
Wasteful, in other words.
Brought to Europe and North America by farmers who wanted to grow it for fur, the nutria was set loose after the market cooled.

It’s an immigrant, a tourist of sorts.
Something scrambling to make sense of life in a foreign climate and culture, chased and maligned by natives that do not understand it.
And I, an American living temporarily in Italy, realized…
I can relate to that.