Reminds me of the time that my son and I tried to cook a live lobster. It literally screamed and tried to crawl out of the pot. My little son cried. We didn't eat that lobster or any other after this. Not as gory as your experience but burned traumatically into my, and my son's, memory nonetheless.
Hi. I enjoyed the nice weather, bought some houseplants and seeds since it is safe to carry them home, and treated myself to some 1921 White Castle Sliders.
I posted an editing note (linchpin, not lynchpin) on Mr. Williamson's column today. He thanked me very graciously for the correction. Perhaps it's because I based it on professional research and cited a source, which a former copy editor like him would appreciate. I thanked him for the thank-you. I resisted mentioning Edith "Edit" Burton.
My Army Ranger handbook circa 1968 (issued to me during Army ROTC training) says the following in relation to survival training:
"Anything that creeps, crawls, swims or flies is a potential source of food". It goes on to describe how to prepare animal food: basically, bleed and gut it, skin (for large game), dispose of the gall and urine bladders without their breaking open and tainting the meat, and throwing away the intestines. It also recommends washing the meat.
I'm willing to bet that one or more of these preparation rules were violated when your snapping turtle was prepared for dinner.
We were well versed in all that. I grew up hunting and eating what we ate. Respect for the animals we hunted was a through line in the hunting and eating part. It was made very clear to us if we shot something, we were going to eat it, period, so no indiscriminate childish blasting away at stuff for fun. A cousin shot a crow one time, and yes, he was forced to clean and eat it. He was very respectful of the process after that.
I could skin and clean any manner of animal at a relatively young age, and could identify gall, urine, intestine, etc., and knew to handle with care. The old man was a nut job, but he knew how to clean game. So, no, it wasn’t due to lack of preparation.
The rat poison as killer agent trope is misleading. Rat poison is mostly if not always Coumadin a common heart disease drug from Wayfarin, designed for humans. It's a blood thinner.
"Warfarin and related substances have been in use as rodenticides for fifty years. They act by binding to the enzyme vitamin K 2,3-epoxide reductase, thereby interrupting the cellular recycling of vitamin K."
And...
"Warfarin sodium was approved for human use in 1954 and went on the market under the brand name Coumadin. It soon became both the most widely used rat poison and the most widely prescribed blood thinner in the world."
How it kills rats...I have no idea. I just know it kills them, but they have to ingest a TON of it to achieve the desired end.
In the many dubious achievements of my career, one is a disturbing knowledge about rats.
Got sorta familiar myself, but more recently. They’re really bountiful in the semi-tropical climates—as is every other pest and disease. I was aware the current poisons cause incredible thirst and hemorrhaging, at least in the consumer-legal products.
What’s your best theory as to why your excursion caused such violent illness? Round of bad field hooch as an aperitif? 🤔🤔🤔
Nah…no drinking going on. I really have no idea. My uneducated guess is…this thing was huge, ancient, and existed eating rotting flesh and anything else it could find. There’s a reason good meat is achieved by feeding animals good feeds. We stewed it for hours, so it wouldn’t have been bacteria. I’m open to anyone’s opinion, but it wasn’t unknowledgeable processing of the animal.
Good to hear. Still, something might have been missed, or maybe a bladder ruptured, or the meat was unusually diseased. I take the Ranger Handbook guidance to mean that just because an animal is a scavenger, it is not necessarily unfit to eat so long as cooked and properly prepared.
Of course, my own experience is limited to the one chicken that I was tasked to kill, prepare and eat as part of my own Army ROTC survival training. 🙂
The Palestinian-Syrian kid that was a principal in the pro-Hamas/antisemitic Columbia demonstrations has been nabbed by ICE and is on his way out of the country. He's a permanent resident green card, there was no warrant to get to him wherever it was he located, pretty much every law governing such activity was ignored or abrogated (big word) in the pinch, attorney demands were hung up on, etc., etc.
Should he be accorded the rights he's supposedly got the...uh....right to? In a callous reaction to the news, my first thought was "good, kick his ass out and send him back to Palestine."
Obviously, laws or whatever applies were ignored and imperial diktat was applied....but I don't care in this case.
Am I a bad man and helping destroy democracy by feeling good about this guy getting kicked out?
I had/have many thoughts. But you and Phil did the topic adequately justice, I think, so there’s not much novel left to say.
It is beyond disturbing that the executive branch—the law enforcement arm of government—openly flouts the laws it is meant to enforce. It just gets more and more brazen about it. The question is one of how long before the law enforcers are used against full native citizens merely for speaking up or lodging protest as are their constitutional rights.
On the other hand, everyone knows the legislative process is generally at a complete standstill—and when they do act, most normies regret it. The courts, too, aren’t exactly know for hasty action. The frustration is understandable.
Slept on it, read a few more things. Apparently, the law states something to the effect that any visa holder that engages in supporting or actively engaging in terrorist activity is subject to the loss of visa and deportation. I don't know the ins and outs of visa law beyond China stuff, but it sounds like the guy violated the terms of his visa/green card. The Columbia stuff wasn't just 1A; they were actively harassing Jewish students, blocking access, "occupying" land, and/or otherwise being a total pain in the butt.
The usual suspects, Andrew Sullivan leading the charge, are currently blowing up on media about how "if it happened to them, we're next!" hysteria, which I'm not buying into. Yet.
Which isn't saying this isn't all a colossal clusterhump leading to multiple disastrous derivatives and legal actions, but the guy might have read the fine print on his status before he decided to promote Hamas on American soil.
Well, in that case, he should have assumed the law could possibly be enforced. Columbia (and other schools) clearly were helping students come to believe anything goes, though. I’ve seen reporting on the more recent college “protests” (antisemitic rioting) and am disgusted.
Oh…I believe Columbia was complicit/an accomplice in the crimes, and I think crimes were committed. 1A does not say one is allowed to physically disrupt anyone else’s life or ability to function, it can’t impinge on other’s rights, can’t threaten and harass others, occupy land that’s not yours, etc.
It’s one of the reasons I’m in the camp of radical university change. Radical.
A green card holder is a permaent legal US resident, second only to US citizens. He should not be expelled unless under legal process, such as lying on hit application for permanent resident status, committing a felony or other legal requirement.
I don't have sympathy for pro-Hamas demonstrators, but I believe in the rule of law, which the Trump administration is trampling underfoot.
I also believe in the rule of law, and now I'm conflicted. The idea of some guy coming in and using our laws to foment the nastiest of nasty activity and then hiding behind our generosity and playing the victim gravels me bad.
If he is a green card holder, he didn't just come here. he would have been here for awhile (not sure of the legal requirements but probably at least a couple of years and maybe much more).
But I absolutely agree with your sentiment. I also don't like how US citizens undermine what America stands for while taking advantage of our laws. The name Bill Ayers, Barack Obama's onetime neighbor in Chicago. a former Weather Underground terrorist, comes to mind.
There is a line from the play and movie "A Man for All Seasons" in which Thomas More tells his son-in-law that he would give the devil himself the benefit of the laws, for his (More's) own protection.
He went to Columbia, was a recent Columbia grad, was going to march in the graduation ceremonies in a month or so. I think I recall he's also married and his wife is going to be giving birth shortly. It's a tangled web of stupidity, hubris, lawyerly and legal complications out the wazoo and who knows what else.
Today's special animal friend, from a safe distance, is the alligator snapping turtle, Macrochelys temminckii. The largest freshwater turtle species in North America, it is not closely related to the common snapping turtle, Chelydra serpentina, which is the largest freshwater turtle in North Carolina. The alligator snapping turtle is found in wetlands from Florida to east Texas and up into Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and other lower-tier Midwestern states.
Like some other reptiles, alligator snapping turtles continue growing throughout their lifespan. Really large ones are realistically reported to weigh over 250 lbs., and individuals around 175 lbs. are found pretty often. These very heavy old males have a carapace length over 30 inches, which doesn't seem all that big, but then you add on the powerful, crocodilian legs and the CLAWS, and it's obvious they could eat you. Although no human deaths are reliably attributed to the alligator snapping turtle, you may contemplate your theoretical edibility with this video:
A typical, adult specimen that you would pull up out of a Missouri farm pond on a fishing line weighs about 30 lbs. My grandfather would shoot them in the head and throw them back in for their relatives to eat. Alligator snapping turtles are generalist carnivores. Their typical diet includes fish (living and dead), other turtles (living and dead), water birds, eggs, and freshwater mollusks; mammals that swim or go near the shore or die can also be eaten.
Reproduction takes place annually in the spring. Courtship involves facing one another and moving heads from side to side, perhaps in a bar. If agreement is reached, the female receives sperm in her cloaca. She may store the sperm for up to two years if environmental conditions are not conducive to nesting. Normally, she builds a nest on the shore and lays 10 to 50 eggs about two months after mating. The eggs incubate for 100 to 140 days. Higher temperatures produce male offspring and lower temperatures female ones; "temperature dependent sex determination" is found in all turtle species. The eggs hatch in early fall.
The eggs and hatchlings are vulnerable to bird and mammal predators, and large fish or other reptiles can eat hatchlings in the water. They reach reproductive maturity in about 12 years, and their lifespan is estimated at 80 to 120 years, although 200 has been hypothesized. That would be the unverified 400 lb. specimen. Don't think about it too much.
Adult alligator snapping turtles have no natural predators. Humans are a threat, but not all that much of one. The species is considered vulnerable due to habitat loss and overcollection for the pet trade. (Here's your sign ...). They are protected in several states and banned in others, such as California. An invasive population is established in South Africa. Released individuals have been spotted in Central European countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary; it is not clear whether breeding populations have taken hold in the wild. The E.U. is trying hard to keep them out!
Poor snapper. When my daughter was in high school she got the new basement bedroom after we remodeled down there. We had to dig out an egress window and one morning she woke up to tapping on the glass. Sure enough there was a big snapper in the window well. My husband kindly picked it up by its tail and took it back to the creek behind our house. There was another big snapper that lived in the pond on hole number eight. A redneck golfer came across it one day and killed it with a golf club. He was eventually stripped of membership privileges after a few other antics.
Last winter they had some pond and creek work done on the course and I came across a snapper that had most likely been dug up as there was a lot of dredging. Poor thing looked dead but it might have just been in hibernation. I picked it up and put it in the creek. He was gone the next day.
Kurt, that was incredibly funny and nauseating at the same time! What a fortunate child you were to participate in the great battle of life and death, mistakes and consequences.
Reading the article, the only bitcoin in the reserve now are already owned by the federal government, from asset forfeitures, civil and criminal. So there is little immediate impact.
Otherwise, I didn't get a clear indication of what purpose this would serve. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are a lot more volatile than gold.
I’m projecting here, but for an operator like Trump, crypto is the answer to so many cons. You can pump and dump or just pump and let the morons enrich you, you can take funds directly as contributions instead of laundering through Deutsche Bank and having to fill out all those nasty forms…and probably so much more.
40s and 50s today, will probably rain. When my husband announced, apropos of nothing, "Looks like another long, sweet spring day!" I wanted to kick him.
It's actually going to get into the upper 60s here today! I'm taking this opportunity to go to a store (not the one I used to work at, one that's closer) and buy some houseplants to replace a few that died on me.
Yes. Smart. I found the image of some guy blazing away at a turtle with his pistol to be right in line with our own lunatic approach to turtle activity.
I sense would have also fit right into our escapade. Wire garrote, axes, mauls, innards flying everywhere, pistols blazing...the only thing missing would have been a can of gasoline and matches.
In their young adult years, the 1930s and 40s, my grandfather and his friends did a lot of wilderness exploration. They might have tried to eat a snapping turtle if they were hungry enough.
A lot of the country was still kinda wilderness-y. My Gramps grew up on a subsistence blueberry farm, the same Gramps where it was whispered he ate muskrat. That generation...food was what you could find.
In the part of the country that has not been wilderness for a while (cities) there was a generation that acquired a taste for certain odd organs from animals whose meat is pretty standard in the American diet. Probably originally out of economic need, either in the old country or during the Depression.
EDIT: Interesting that a different font is used in the comment composition window from what Substack previously used. Could this somehow be their fix for the disappearing words? Cause it didn't happen today. But I don't get the connection.
Reminds me of the time that my son and I tried to cook a live lobster. It literally screamed and tried to crawl out of the pot. My little son cried. We didn't eat that lobster or any other after this. Not as gory as your experience but burned traumatically into my, and my son's, memory nonetheless.
Hi. I enjoyed the nice weather, bought some houseplants and seeds since it is safe to carry them home, and treated myself to some 1921 White Castle Sliders.
I posted an editing note (linchpin, not lynchpin) on Mr. Williamson's column today. He thanked me very graciously for the correction. Perhaps it's because I based it on professional research and cited a source, which a former copy editor like him would appreciate. I thanked him for the thank-you. I resisted mentioning Edith "Edit" Burton.
re: Eating snapping turtles.
My Army Ranger handbook circa 1968 (issued to me during Army ROTC training) says the following in relation to survival training:
"Anything that creeps, crawls, swims or flies is a potential source of food". It goes on to describe how to prepare animal food: basically, bleed and gut it, skin (for large game), dispose of the gall and urine bladders without their breaking open and tainting the meat, and throwing away the intestines. It also recommends washing the meat.
I'm willing to bet that one or more of these preparation rules were violated when your snapping turtle was prepared for dinner.
We were well versed in all that. I grew up hunting and eating what we ate. Respect for the animals we hunted was a through line in the hunting and eating part. It was made very clear to us if we shot something, we were going to eat it, period, so no indiscriminate childish blasting away at stuff for fun. A cousin shot a crow one time, and yes, he was forced to clean and eat it. He was very respectful of the process after that.
I could skin and clean any manner of animal at a relatively young age, and could identify gall, urine, intestine, etc., and knew to handle with care. The old man was a nut job, but he knew how to clean game. So, no, it wasn’t due to lack of preparation.
Maybe the poor creature had spent a week dining on rat poison…or poisoned rat carcasses… Oh, the mysterious ways of Ma Nature.
The rat poison as killer agent trope is misleading. Rat poison is mostly if not always Coumadin a common heart disease drug from Wayfarin, designed for humans. It's a blood thinner.
"Warfarin and related substances have been in use as rodenticides for fifty years. They act by binding to the enzyme vitamin K 2,3-epoxide reductase, thereby interrupting the cellular recycling of vitamin K."
And...
"Warfarin sodium was approved for human use in 1954 and went on the market under the brand name Coumadin. It soon became both the most widely used rat poison and the most widely prescribed blood thinner in the world."
How it kills rats...I have no idea. I just know it kills them, but they have to ingest a TON of it to achieve the desired end.
In the many dubious achievements of my career, one is a disturbing knowledge about rats.
Got sorta familiar myself, but more recently. They’re really bountiful in the semi-tropical climates—as is every other pest and disease. I was aware the current poisons cause incredible thirst and hemorrhaging, at least in the consumer-legal products.
What’s your best theory as to why your excursion caused such violent illness? Round of bad field hooch as an aperitif? 🤔🤔🤔
Nah…no drinking going on. I really have no idea. My uneducated guess is…this thing was huge, ancient, and existed eating rotting flesh and anything else it could find. There’s a reason good meat is achieved by feeding animals good feeds. We stewed it for hours, so it wouldn’t have been bacteria. I’m open to anyone’s opinion, but it wasn’t unknowledgeable processing of the animal.
Good to hear. Still, something might have been missed, or maybe a bladder ruptured, or the meat was unusually diseased. I take the Ranger Handbook guidance to mean that just because an animal is a scavenger, it is not necessarily unfit to eat so long as cooked and properly prepared.
Of course, my own experience is limited to the one chicken that I was tasked to kill, prepare and eat as part of my own Army ROTC survival training. 🙂
A general question to the commentariat....
The Palestinian-Syrian kid that was a principal in the pro-Hamas/antisemitic Columbia demonstrations has been nabbed by ICE and is on his way out of the country. He's a permanent resident green card, there was no warrant to get to him wherever it was he located, pretty much every law governing such activity was ignored or abrogated (big word) in the pinch, attorney demands were hung up on, etc., etc.
Should he be accorded the rights he's supposedly got the...uh....right to? In a callous reaction to the news, my first thought was "good, kick his ass out and send him back to Palestine."
Obviously, laws or whatever applies were ignored and imperial diktat was applied....but I don't care in this case.
Am I a bad man and helping destroy democracy by feeling good about this guy getting kicked out?
I had/have many thoughts. But you and Phil did the topic adequately justice, I think, so there’s not much novel left to say.
It is beyond disturbing that the executive branch—the law enforcement arm of government—openly flouts the laws it is meant to enforce. It just gets more and more brazen about it. The question is one of how long before the law enforcers are used against full native citizens merely for speaking up or lodging protest as are their constitutional rights.
On the other hand, everyone knows the legislative process is generally at a complete standstill—and when they do act, most normies regret it. The courts, too, aren’t exactly know for hasty action. The frustration is understandable.
Slept on it, read a few more things. Apparently, the law states something to the effect that any visa holder that engages in supporting or actively engaging in terrorist activity is subject to the loss of visa and deportation. I don't know the ins and outs of visa law beyond China stuff, but it sounds like the guy violated the terms of his visa/green card. The Columbia stuff wasn't just 1A; they were actively harassing Jewish students, blocking access, "occupying" land, and/or otherwise being a total pain in the butt.
The usual suspects, Andrew Sullivan leading the charge, are currently blowing up on media about how "if it happened to them, we're next!" hysteria, which I'm not buying into. Yet.
Which isn't saying this isn't all a colossal clusterhump leading to multiple disastrous derivatives and legal actions, but the guy might have read the fine print on his status before he decided to promote Hamas on American soil.
Well, in that case, he should have assumed the law could possibly be enforced. Columbia (and other schools) clearly were helping students come to believe anything goes, though. I’ve seen reporting on the more recent college “protests” (antisemitic rioting) and am disgusted.
Oh…I believe Columbia was complicit/an accomplice in the crimes, and I think crimes were committed. 1A does not say one is allowed to physically disrupt anyone else’s life or ability to function, it can’t impinge on other’s rights, can’t threaten and harass others, occupy land that’s not yours, etc.
It’s one of the reasons I’m in the camp of radical university change. Radical.
A green card holder is a permaent legal US resident, second only to US citizens. He should not be expelled unless under legal process, such as lying on hit application for permanent resident status, committing a felony or other legal requirement.
I don't have sympathy for pro-Hamas demonstrators, but I believe in the rule of law, which the Trump administration is trampling underfoot.
He may have committed a felony. Read my response to The Leader above.
I also believe in the rule of law, and now I'm conflicted. The idea of some guy coming in and using our laws to foment the nastiest of nasty activity and then hiding behind our generosity and playing the victim gravels me bad.
If he is a green card holder, he didn't just come here. he would have been here for awhile (not sure of the legal requirements but probably at least a couple of years and maybe much more).
But I absolutely agree with your sentiment. I also don't like how US citizens undermine what America stands for while taking advantage of our laws. The name Bill Ayers, Barack Obama's onetime neighbor in Chicago. a former Weather Underground terrorist, comes to mind.
There is a line from the play and movie "A Man for All Seasons" in which Thomas More tells his son-in-law that he would give the devil himself the benefit of the laws, for his (More's) own protection.
He went to Columbia, was a recent Columbia grad, was going to march in the graduation ceremonies in a month or so. I think I recall he's also married and his wife is going to be giving birth shortly. It's a tangled web of stupidity, hubris, lawyerly and legal complications out the wazoo and who knows what else.
And Bill Ayer's...yes, he comes to mind in this.
Today's special animal friend, from a safe distance, is the alligator snapping turtle, Macrochelys temminckii. The largest freshwater turtle species in North America, it is not closely related to the common snapping turtle, Chelydra serpentina, which is the largest freshwater turtle in North Carolina. The alligator snapping turtle is found in wetlands from Florida to east Texas and up into Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and other lower-tier Midwestern states.
Like some other reptiles, alligator snapping turtles continue growing throughout their lifespan. Really large ones are realistically reported to weigh over 250 lbs., and individuals around 175 lbs. are found pretty often. These very heavy old males have a carapace length over 30 inches, which doesn't seem all that big, but then you add on the powerful, crocodilian legs and the CLAWS, and it's obvious they could eat you. Although no human deaths are reliably attributed to the alligator snapping turtle, you may contemplate your theoretical edibility with this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-aILnSkMXU
A typical, adult specimen that you would pull up out of a Missouri farm pond on a fishing line weighs about 30 lbs. My grandfather would shoot them in the head and throw them back in for their relatives to eat. Alligator snapping turtles are generalist carnivores. Their typical diet includes fish (living and dead), other turtles (living and dead), water birds, eggs, and freshwater mollusks; mammals that swim or go near the shore or die can also be eaten.
Reproduction takes place annually in the spring. Courtship involves facing one another and moving heads from side to side, perhaps in a bar. If agreement is reached, the female receives sperm in her cloaca. She may store the sperm for up to two years if environmental conditions are not conducive to nesting. Normally, she builds a nest on the shore and lays 10 to 50 eggs about two months after mating. The eggs incubate for 100 to 140 days. Higher temperatures produce male offspring and lower temperatures female ones; "temperature dependent sex determination" is found in all turtle species. The eggs hatch in early fall.
The eggs and hatchlings are vulnerable to bird and mammal predators, and large fish or other reptiles can eat hatchlings in the water. They reach reproductive maturity in about 12 years, and their lifespan is estimated at 80 to 120 years, although 200 has been hypothesized. That would be the unverified 400 lb. specimen. Don't think about it too much.
Adult alligator snapping turtles have no natural predators. Humans are a threat, but not all that much of one. The species is considered vulnerable due to habitat loss and overcollection for the pet trade. (Here's your sign ...). They are protected in several states and banned in others, such as California. An invasive population is established in South Africa. Released individuals have been spotted in Central European countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary; it is not clear whether breeding populations have taken hold in the wild. The E.U. is trying hard to keep them out!
"lower-tier Midwestern states". excluding Ohio, of course. 🙂
"....from a safe distance".... HAHAHAHA......
Poor snapper. When my daughter was in high school she got the new basement bedroom after we remodeled down there. We had to dig out an egress window and one morning she woke up to tapping on the glass. Sure enough there was a big snapper in the window well. My husband kindly picked it up by its tail and took it back to the creek behind our house. There was another big snapper that lived in the pond on hole number eight. A redneck golfer came across it one day and killed it with a golf club. He was eventually stripped of membership privileges after a few other antics.
He would have fit right into our debacle.
Last winter they had some pond and creek work done on the course and I came across a snapper that had most likely been dug up as there was a lot of dredging. Poor thing looked dead but it might have just been in hibernation. I picked it up and put it in the creek. He was gone the next day.
Kurt, that was incredibly funny and nauseating at the same time! What a fortunate child you were to participate in the great battle of life and death, mistakes and consequences.
Funny and nauseating….yes…sigh…. Childhood tends to be a blur of antics I don't recall the inspiration for. I'm still excavating what happened.
My thoughts exactly.
Consequences.
Good morning. 33 here but predicated to get all the way to the 60s this afternoon.
The mothership is reporting on Trump’s “strategic Bitcoin reserve”. FP is headlining “How Trump loosened the rules for hunting terrorists”.
"Strategic Bitcoin Reserve".... I hesitate to make predictions, but this seems like it can only go South in a big way.
Reading the article, the only bitcoin in the reserve now are already owned by the federal government, from asset forfeitures, civil and criminal. So there is little immediate impact.
Otherwise, I didn't get a clear indication of what purpose this would serve. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are a lot more volatile than gold.
I’m projecting here, but for an operator like Trump, crypto is the answer to so many cons. You can pump and dump or just pump and let the morons enrich you, you can take funds directly as contributions instead of laundering through Deutsche Bank and having to fill out all those nasty forms…and probably so much more.
40s and 50s today, will probably rain. When my husband announced, apropos of nothing, "Looks like another long, sweet spring day!" I wanted to kick him.
It's actually going to get into the upper 60s here today! I'm taking this opportunity to go to a store (not the one I used to work at, one that's closer) and buy some houseplants to replace a few that died on me.
Good morning. Eeeeew.
Good morning, Cynthia. <crosses “catching and eating a snapping turtle” off my bucket list>
That's funny.
I've caught snapping turtles out of farm ponds in Missouri. My grandfather would shoot them in the head with a pistol.
But (based on your TSAF post) he didn't eat them. Smart.
No, it's not something they ate.
Yes. Smart. I found the image of some guy blazing away at a turtle with his pistol to be right in line with our own lunatic approach to turtle activity.
I sense would have also fit right into our escapade. Wire garrote, axes, mauls, innards flying everywhere, pistols blazing...the only thing missing would have been a can of gasoline and matches.
In their young adult years, the 1930s and 40s, my grandfather and his friends did a lot of wilderness exploration. They might have tried to eat a snapping turtle if they were hungry enough.
A lot of the country was still kinda wilderness-y. My Gramps grew up on a subsistence blueberry farm, the same Gramps where it was whispered he ate muskrat. That generation...food was what you could find.
In the part of the country that has not been wilderness for a while (cities) there was a generation that acquired a taste for certain odd organs from animals whose meat is pretty standard in the American diet. Probably originally out of economic need, either in the old country or during the Depression.
EDIT: Interesting that a different font is used in the comment composition window from what Substack previously used. Could this somehow be their fix for the disappearing words? Cause it didn't happen today. But I don't get the connection.
Happy Monday. It’s frosty here on the downhill slope, frost-free on the mountaintop.
Kurt’s piece put me in mind of David Sedaris. Which is to say: a great expression of very self-aware, hilarious nostalgia.
Having my silly stories referenced in the same sentence as David Sedaris is high praise. Thanks much.