Apparently, from what I gather from a New Yorker article I am now reading, it is a not uncommon practice in
Kentucky, U.S.A. for people to shoot
squirrels out of the trees and then eat them. This sounds as unlikely to me as it might to a Kentuckian that the poisonous
fugu (blowfish) is mighty fine eatin’.
To each their own but it is fun to look over at someone else’s plate. After all, the salad there might indeed be greener.
Now, according to this article, “Squirrel And Man” by Burkhard Bilger:
“In August of 1997, two neurologists, Joseph Berger and Eric Weisman…published a letter in the British medical journal The Lancet. A disturbing pattern had come to their attention. In the previous four years, five patients in western Kentucky had been diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or C.J.D., of which mad-cow disease is a variant.”
Oh my.
“All five patients had one thing in common: they ate squirrel brains.”
Um.
Let’s see. Later on, the article says that squirrel soup had been thought to cure colds. Oh, and here’s something about squirrel sandwiches…