Melanie Typaldos has a few hundred pounds of rodent at her home in Buda, Texas, but she won’t need any rat poison.  The rodent she has is actually the family pet.  He’s named Caplin Rous, and he’s a 2-foot-tall, 200-pound rodent from South America called a capybara, and he might be the most popular capybara on the Internet thanks to his blog and Facebook account.   He originally came to the Typaldos household about 2.5 years ago, and he’s been the pet of the Typaldos family since he was 11 days old.

When I was in college, I lived with a South American for awhile.  One day, he was talking about something, and I brought up the capybara.  He explained to me that it was just like a giant water rat, and tried to dissuade my efforts to get him to sneak me back one as a pet by explaining that they’re vicious and tend to bite.  I kind of think he was pulling my leg, because Caplin looks as cuddly as you please.

Tags: capybara, Caplin Rous, world’s largest rodent, giant rodents, rodents of unusual size, Melanie Typaldos, Buda, Texas, unusual animals, unusual pets

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