Eat the Invaders!

Bunnies digging up your lawn? Deer munching your veggies? Canada geese turning your pond pee green to bullfrogs’ hoarse serenades? Here’s another twist on nuisance animals taking over the neighborhood. Eat them. Believe us, they can be very tasty!

Exotic species (and some aggressive native ones) are muscling into our remaining wildlands as well as our gardens, reducing ecosystem diversity and resilience. Meanwhile, Lopezisans are expanding farm acreage and livestock to produce more healthy local food. Why not combine our appetite for local food production with a serious community effort to manage invasive species and save fragile habitats and biodiversity? It’s as easy as Lapin a la moutarde.

To make our point, we are inviting you to join us at VITA’s on Sunday September 23 for a free tasting of traditional dishes made by local chefs that will have you looking at garden invaders an entirely different way. Yum! VITA’s usual wonderful wine pairings, accompaniments and desserts will be available for sale as well. It all comes with a super-special Commedia dell’Arte entertainment provided by Jack Tate and The Small Potatoes on the theme of the evening.

And if you feel inspired to do something delicious yourself with goose breast, rabbit, bullfrog or saddle of venison (or perhaps a blackberry pie), email info@kwiaht.org. Give us a shout, too, if you’d like to help by supplying our event chefs with an extra rabbit or two, or some fat geese!

Eat the Invaders is sponsored by OUR Lopez (Organization Utilizing Resources) and by KWIAHT, your local laboratory for the science of stewardship, with the invaluable support of VITA’s Wildly Delicious.