Eating Aliens: One Man's Adventures Hunting Invasive Animal Species (20 page)

With all meat, age matters. A young example of a species will be tenderer than an old one. If you’re stuck with an old bird, there are steps you can take to tenderize it, or you can process it differently. As with any kind of cooking, really, recognize what you have and deal with it appropriately. Because I’m hunting for food, I’m after a younger turkey, deer, or goose instead of an older, larger one that would make a good trophy.

Gaminess is usually the product of sloppy butchering rather than the fault of the meat, although with some animals, it can’t be helped. For example, a fully mature, uncastrated boar almost always tastes foul. But for the most part,
gamy
is a catch-all term for meat that has been butchered badly. Usually it means the hunter took too long to get the meat carved off and then cooled to prevent bacterial contamination. This is a simple matter to deal with when hunting geese; I bring along a cooler full of ice and gut each goose as soon as possible.

The wonderful thing about hunting giant Canada geese for food is that you get so much for the effort. Many states have a special September hunting season during which resident geese are targeted. Bag limits are usually high, often up to half a dozen per day. There’s more than the meat, too; the down is excellent stuff and comes out easily by the fistful. I’ve gotten into the habit of bringing an extra bag when I’m after geese so I can save the down in it. To kill any parasites, put the down in a cloth bag, stitch it closed, and run it through the dryer on high heat. A goose-down pillow requires just a few geese, or you can improve an inexpensive winter parka by removing the polyester filling and replacing it with wild-goose down, which is much warmer and resists damp.

The Slow Food cooking demo in Brooklyn received a good amount of press, and I repeated it back home in Virginia, this time at a winery and with a different group of chefs. Everyone thought the geese were worth eating. The only problem was that New York was still dumping its geese in landfills.

Months went by and I’d just about given up hope of changing anything. Suddenly, at the moment I least expected it — on the very evening when I got home from my long, strange hunt for nutria in Louisiana — I learned that New York City had finally relented. It would be sending its thousands of culled geese to Pennsylvania, to be donated to food banks.

Tilapia, Plecos, and Armored Catfish

After the nutria odyssey, I wanted something uncomplicated for my next hunting trip. Learning about Philippe’s successes in creating a market for nutria piqued my interest in other invasive species that could be moved onto grocery shelves and restaurant menus.

It would help to focus on something people were already comfortable eating, such as tilapia.

Tilapia is a fish known for its somewhat bland and unfishy flavor. It’s a fish for people who don’t especially like fish. It’s widely available in grocery stores because it’s easy to farm. In fact, genetic testing has shown that quite a lot of what is sold as another species of fish is tilapia: It’s been fraudulently passed off as everything from Chilean sea bass to cod.

The simplicity of farming tilapia has led to its use in aquaculture around the world, in places far from its natural habitat in Africa and the Middle East — places like Florida.

Tilapia
is actually a catch-all name for many dozens of species that belong to the Cichlidae family. Cichlids are popular for home aquariums, for a couple of reasons. First, they’re good parents (as fish go). They care for their young longer than most other fish do, giving them an advantage over less doting parents that don’t watch out for their offspring. Second, cichlids hybridize readily — that is, they’ll mate with other species, occasionally creating a new breed.

The invasive tilapia started out as
Oreochromis aureus,
the “blue tilapia,” which was introduced into the wild by the state of Florida in 1961. It was hoped the blue would become a popular game fish and also would devour some of the unsightly algae on Florida’s lakes. It was assumed that Florida’s largemouth bass would keep tilapia numbers in check.

In practice, blue tilapia were aggressive enough and grew fast enough to hold their own against the native bass. They multiplied rapidly and expanded their range beyond the lakes via the state’s vast system of canals. According to Duane Chapman, a fish biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who specializes in invasive fish, enough tilapia farms have been flooded (by hurricanes) and enough aquarium hobbyists have dumped unwanted fish that, because of their rather loose mating habits, there probably aren’t many pure
Oreochromis aureus
left in Florida.

When I think of Florida and invasive species, my mind makes a beeline to George Cera, with whom I’d hunted black spiny-tailed iguanas the previous summer. George and I had kept in touch, and I was a guest on his radio talk show a few times. We talked on the phone now and then and kept up with each other’s adventures. Because he knows wildlife inside and out and shares my passion for going after invasive species, he’d be the best guy in Florida to join me in pursuit of invasive fish.

I called him on a Thursday, right after returning from an outdoor writers conference in Utah. My suitcase was still packed. Our conversation went like this:

“Hey, George, you want to throw cast nets in canals next week and see what’s really going on with the tilapia down your way? Maybe we can bag some other stuff while we’re at it.”

“Okay, but I need a guest in the studio on my radio show at eleven on Saturday morning. Can you make it?”

“That’s a two-day drive . . .”

“Yeah, but I really need you on the air here.”

“Okay, then.”

A few hours later I was in the car, driving south as the sun went down. I think I got as far as North Carolina before I realized that my suitcase was packed for the snow-covered peaks at a ski resort in Utah rather than the muggy heat of Florida in July. Oh, well; too late.

I arrived at the studio with half an hour to spare. We did the show and then drove out to Gasparilla Island, where I checked into a lovely cottage that the good people of the Gasparilla Innlet had furnished for my use during the off-season.

The cottages at the Innlet are actually old houses of the classic local style: low, single-story cottages with hip roofs and a generous front porch. Each has been divided into four luxurious units, each with a private entry. It feels cozy and private, but in reality there could be someone on the other side of the wall from you.

After settling in, I went over to George’s place, a few blocks away. We decided to get right to fishing. My car was already filled with gear of every description to meet any invasive-fish contingency, from crab traps to surf rods. George got in and we drove to the mainland at the edge of the Myakka River State Park.

Tilapia are primarily plant-eaters, so they don’t often see a reason to bite a hook. This makes netting the most practical way of catching them. Fortunately, I had brought a small cast net of three or four feet in diameter.

A cast net is round, with weights around the edges and a long rope attached to the middle of it. You throw it in such a way that it spreads out in midair and sinks quickly when it hits the water. In addition to making it sink on top of any fish immediately, the weights close the net around any prey as it’s lifted when you hoist the rope.

The first spot we tried was beside a small bridge over a canal. A bridge is a good place to fish in hot, sunny weather because fish seek its shade. Taking care to loop the end of the rope around my wrist (to use to raise the net), I threw what was surely the worst toss of a cast net George had ever seen.

George demonstrated the correct way to gather and throw the net. Holding a weight in each hand, you rotate your upper body to put a spin on the net and, through centripetal force, make it spread out fully.

“Throw it like it owes you money,” he said.

That was good advice. I tossed that net as hard as I could. After a while, it started coming back in with fish. At first I was getting little native sunfish and baby bass. Then the darndest thing was flopping around in the net as I brought it up onto shore.

An armored catfish.

It was covered in what appeared to be an overlapping series of vertical plates along the length of its body. If you enlarged it to the size of a Greyhound bus, this fish would look like something out of the Devonian period. As it stood, the fish was about eight inches.

Armored catfish have been popular in home aquariums for years. They’re native to the Amazon Basin, which is a tough neighborhood. If a fish can make it there, it can make it anywhere, given warm enough water. Armored catfish go by the name
Callichthys callichthys,
but scientists suspect that what’s called
C. callichthys
in the aquarium trade is actually many similar but distinct species yet to be sorted out by taxonomists.

Not much research has been conducted on the impact of armored catfish on native Floridian wildlife. The one thing that’s well established is that the fish cause problems for endangered manatees. During cold weather (cold for Florida), the manatee must keep still for long stretches of time, economizing calories by limiting movement. Studies show that armored catfish bug the hell out of the manatee when it’s immobile. The catfish startles it and attempts to suck algae off its body. This prompts movement just when the animal needs to be staying still.

My own captured armored catfish struggled longer out of the water than any other fish I’ve ever caught, with the exception of American eels. I believe, contrary to many other people, that fish can experience pain; because of this, I always try to dispatch a fish as quickly as possible to avoid prolonged suffering. What I do is slide a knife very deep between the eyes and rock it back to the rear of the eyes. This pierces and disables the brain.

The trouble in this case was that the knife wouldn’t go in. At all. I opened my backpack and pulled out a much bigger knife, one verging on Crocodile Dundee territory. That, too, failed to penetrate.

They don’t call these things “armored” catfish for nothing.

Frustrated, I set the fish in the bottom of a cooler, hoping that it would expire soon.

After a while, George and I drove on a bit. That’s the thing about throwing a cast net: The act of throwing it disturbs the fish in the area, so there’s no point in repeatedly throwing it at the same spot. You make a few tosses and then move down the bank.

George knew of a spot that was usually loaded with tilapia. After a good rain, he said, you could see the grass at the edge of the water rustling from their movement. This spot would be great, he promised. It had only one catch.

Alligators. Many, very big alligators. Apparently the Myakka River State Park is notorious for them. These beasts made the gators I’d been dodging in Louisiana look like skinks. We stood against the disturbingly low railing of the bridge and watched a couple of nine-footers cruise in from a hundred yards away and make a beeline for the water directly under us.

These alligators have seen people with cast nets, and know a dangling net on a rope promises a meal at each end. George helpfully pointed out that it would be necessary here to tie the rope to the bridge rather than looping it around my wrist. One good tug from a nine-foot alligator and I’d be in the water on top of it (at best).

The alligators were a definite problem. I would move from spot to spot on the railing, throw the net, and watch as gators swam for it, hoping it would be full of fish and worth tearing apart. Their very movement into the area scared away the fish. We had to constantly move from one spot to another. On several occasions, one particularly aggressive gator grabbed the net or the rope in its mouth and refused to let go. There wasn’t much to do except wait and take pictures until it tired of this game.

The sun began to set and the park would be closing soon. Some bold armadillos sauntered across the road in full view. If hunting had been allowed in the park, I’d have gone after them. We weren’t quite skunked, with one armored catfish bagged, and felt good about our prospects for the next day. I drove George home and then went back to my cottage.

I sat outside on the concrete steps and opened the cooler. To my surprise, the catfish seemed none the worse for wear. I discovered later that the armored cat normally gulps air, as many other catfishes do. It has dense capillaries lining the inside of its stomach that absorb oxygen in a manner similar to the working of a lung.