In reply to Chester, on the subject of dead mice.

[mapsedge]

I started this as a reply, decided it would make a good post. So here we are. This was predicated on the post I wrote for The Road Less Ordinary, Of Mice and Traps.

To Chester:

Michelle has watched (correction, helped, she says) her grandfather, an avid racoon hunter, skin and field dress a racoon on several occasions (I'm pretty sure it was a different racoon each time). She has changed a variety of diapers. She held me once while I was being violently ill from a bad reaction to a prescribed pharmaceutical. She will insert her hand into the body cavity of a dressed chicken to remove the giblet package and scrape away any innards the butcher might have missed.

But she will not touch a dead mouse, or bait a fishhook.

I told her yesterday as we were making pizza that I'd like to try rabbit. She agreed, guardedly, like she knew there was more coming. There was: I told her why.

Our neighborhood is lousy with rabbits, making them a cheap source of edible and, with the right seasonings and cooking method, I would guess delicious protein. As my predation creates less competition for food, their population would grow, providing more food for us, and so on. It's a win-win. Outside the city limits this is "normal." Inside them, it's "weird." I don't get the distinction.

We try to eat naturally and seasonally. I can field dress a broccoli blindfolded, chop an onion with nary a tear, and I am ... curious ... to try my hand at our world's fauna, to pay, as Michael Pollan says, "the full karmic debt for my meal."

I'm a kid of the suburbs. I am not a hunter or trapper, but I am keen to try.

Comments

[purpledumbass.livejournal.com]

I remember a long time back, I had rabbit when staying at my uncle's house when I was about 5 years old. I remember this distinctly, as my uncle and older cousins were cleaning the rabbits, I recall a small fountain of blood from one of the rabbits, causing one my female cousins to "scream like a little girl" (how appropriate, considering that she WAS a little girl), because the small spurting actually hit her. Then moments later, her sister was nearly equally dismayed when, in the final instants of its small and fluffy life, one of the other bunnies peed on her as a last act of defiance. I laughed with childish glee that it wasn't me that was peed on. I went through a short period of "what do you mean we're eating rabbit for supper?" along with a small amount of being finicky because this was something I'd never eaten before. As children sometimes do, I was set that I was going to dislike it before I sat down to eat. My aunt pan-fried it like chicken, so it was very similar to chicken in that respect, as best as I can remember.

I also had rabbit roasted over a campfire at KCRF one day. Back when Fox had the Poacher's camp, my ex-wife's birth-mother came to visit during the run of Faire. She brought with her two of Pulaski county's grand champion 4H winning bunnies for dinner. These rabbits were slow roasted over the poacher's campfire, with a chef's apprentice marinating them occasionally, whilst he tended the fire. This time, the rabbit wasn't too bad, but I think I would have preferred it fried.

Since then, I haven't had many opportunities to have rabbit. I wouldn't turn my nose up at it in any case. If I could have it pan-fried the way my aunt did it those many years ago, I'd certainly jump at the chance to have it again. (Get it? Jump...rabbit... --oh, never mind...)

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

Should this plan come to fruition, I will make a point of a rabbit dinner for you. I've only ever had it once - barbecued by someone who wasn't particularly good at it. It was greasy, but I think that was more a function of the sauce and the cook, rather than the animal, which I remember tasting rather pleasant under all the oil. I'm looking forward to trying it prepared well.