Effect Measure

It wouldn't bother me in the least. I'd prefer dog, I think, more meat.

Posted by: Joe Six Pack | March 14, 2008 7:21 AM

Dear Revere,
So...what are the public health implications for eating rats, either wild or urban?

Although I'm not Jewish, I do admire the sensibility of the kosher proscriptions for food, and try not to dine too often on "bottom feeders" like shrimp and catfish. I think rats fall into that category, for me.

By the way, rats have to eat something. Were the bird flu chickens disposed of in pits nearby? Were they burned so the rats would have nothing to eat? Are the culled chickens a source of food for these rats?

What have our government agencies done in previous cullings of chickens in the U.S., and how are the carcasses disposed of so that rats or other animals will not be able to get to them?

Love,
Library Lady

Posted by: Library Lady | March 14, 2008 10:19 AM

Well in the military sometimes you dont ask and you dont tell. In the days of my military career in the far away land of Honduras we hadnt had a food drop in several days and one of the locals said, "We get food, no problem." So they came back fired up a fire, produced chili's, banana's and the local equivalent of apples and then set to skinning something that looked like a small dog but I didnt watch. Out it goes into a hole wrapped in all these condiments and we got about an hour later a smell that made your mouth water.

So we sat and ate. Two helpings in fact. By the time it was all over I was tight bellied and knowing I was going to be heading to the bushes soon. Then the question, "What kind of dog was that". The locals looked back and forth and said, "No dog...Rata".

"Rata?" I said. "What kind of monkey is a Rata?"

They looked at each other and started giggling and the interpreter starts laughing himself. Later on in the afternoon he gave me the big news and I had to think for a minute, fight off the instant revulsion and then remember what we eat in the US and call food. We had rat again that night.

Posted by: M. Randolph Kruger | March 14, 2008 11:24 AM

When I was a kid, my brother and I skinned a rattlesnake--we talked about eating it but, since it was 3 days old, decided against it.
Had an uncle, though, who, in his army career, had eaten all sorts of things from insects to whatever indiginous animal life and plant life was available. Said if you are hungry enough, you can eat just about anything. Hmm, I guess so.....

Posted by: BW | March 14, 2008 12:20 PM

My grandmother 'served' (to make it sound sweet) rat in WW2. My mom always said it was very tasty.

And they stayed quite plentiful till the end of the war and were of course easy for humans to catch. As my mother came out of it seriously undernourished (to put it delicately) I possibly owe my own existence to the Rat. And to her courage.

Posted by: Ana | March 14, 2008 2:14 PM

Long ago when I was a camp counselor in the Sierras, some of the more intrepid staff caught rattlesnakes [I played lifeguard and kept the kids back when necessary]. We cooked several small ones. Skinned and gutted and fried, they tasted a little like chicken, but they were bony, kind of like chicken breast with most of the meat removed.

Pauls lane: you can get a month's supply of atorvastatin [Lipitor] and pravastatin [Pravachol] as generics for $4.00 a month at many big pharmacies.

Posted by: natural cynic | March 14, 2008 4:09 PM

No it tasted like a very light but a little overly chewy trout. The rats down there are swamp rats rather than city types. Not much disease in them I am told because they arent as congested into nasty areas. The serve the same functions as scavengers but there likely arent any accumulated heavy metals and other things in them. No points of source to draw on. Big though. One could give a sheltie a pretty good fight.

For days after the rat killin', they sat around and told stories about the super-rat (swamp) that attacked goats from time to time. Sixty pounder with teeth like a boar hog? I never met one while I was there but I would hear stuff in the night besides insurgents that would make me wonder.

I have had caiman, gators, goat, rat, chicken, fish (I'll tell you about using cyanide on fish in streams sometime) and pig. Their pig down there is very sweet and not this corn fed hog wallow stuff we have here and very likely accumulating everything under the sun. They get big but not as big as a Hogzilla, 300 pounders. The do the piglets at about a year. I now know where the term "bleeding like a stuck pig", comes from.

Posted by: M. Randolph Kruger | March 15, 2008 12:50 AM