I went to local crafter Shaun Deller's website to find out about the perfect bike hats he makes. Instead, I got a schooling in post-apocalyptic survival.

We here at the Mercury take the apocalypse very seriously and Deller has some good tips. He recommends:

1. Possum wool clothes. Apparently these are already for sale.

2. Killing nutria for food. It's worth watching this amazing video of Deller and friends biking along the Sprinwater corridor, setting nutria traps, and then strapping the dead nutria to his bike rack for easy transportation home.

Here's how Deller describes the experience of eating nutria on his blog:

We then returned with our catch and skinned them, prepared the hides for tanning and butchered the carcass and cooked up a bit of the meat. Most folks seemed pleasantly surprised at the "chicken- like" taste of the meat... These mammals are plentiful in Portland and sometimes even overpopulated, and I think could offer a healthy source of meat for humans. Think of it as free-range sources of meat, fat, and fur. : )

In case you're feeling sorry for the rodents, read this press release from the U.S. Geological Survey imploring folks to kill nutria because they're "eating out" the Gulf Coast. Their release honestly begins: "'Eating-out' might be a term you associate with a pleasant experience..."