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Sunday, February 16, 2025

Capybara loose in the city

by

Shastri Boodan
885 days ago
20220914

A capy­bara, de­scribed as the world’s largest ro­dent, brought ex­cite­ment, cu­rios­i­ty and a bit of fear to the cap­i­tal city ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing, af­ter it was spot­ted roam­ing along In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain.

How the capy­bara made its way in­to the cap­i­tal city re­mained a mys­tery but the sight of the 150-pound, 4-foot ro­dent was enough to prompt peo­ple on their way to work to call the po­lice, who in turn con­tact­ed the di­rec­tor and founder of the El So­cor­ro Wildlife Cen­tre Ri­car­do Meade.

Meade ex­plained that he was on his way in­to Port-of-Spain around 5.15 yes­ter­day morn­ing, when he got a call from the po­lice that a capy­bara was spot­ted out­side First Cit­i­zens bank along the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade.

When Meade ar­rived, he cor­nered the capy­bara in front of Roy­al Bank, where he man­aged to skil­ful­ly re­move the an­i­mal and load it in­to his car.

Meade said around 11 am yes­ter­day, he took the capy­bara to safe­ty and back to more of its nat­ur­al habi­tat—the Ca­roni Swamp. The capy­bara was re­leased in­to the swamp near Nanan’s Bird Sanc­tu­ary Tours.

“We brought it here so it can re­unite with oth­er capy­baras near­by and live out the rest of her life,” he said.

Meade said the an­i­mal has been des­ig­nat­ed a pest and peo­ple are al­lowed to slaugh­ter it if it is on their pri­vate prop­er­ty, but he warned that it does not give any­one the right to kill the an­i­mal at will.

For those con­fused as to how such an an­i­mal could be in Port-of-Spain, Meade said the capy­bara could have es­caped from some­one or some in­sti­tu­tion in or around the cap­i­tal city, or have wan­dered from the near­by Beetham land­fill, where they search for food, swamp­lands or sew­er­age area on the south­ern side of the Beetham High­way.

Meade said the capy­bara is the largest ro­dent in the world and is re­lat­ed to the com­mon rat, agouti and Lappe. He said the capy­bara would nor­mal­ly eat the green ana­con­da and is na­tive to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Meade al­so ex­plained that pop­u­la­tion pres­sure is forc­ing the species out of its nat­ur­al habi­tat and in­to oth­er ar­eas.


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