Found on Gab (clickit to biggit):
I had to laugh at the instructions.
I've been present when an elephant that was destroying crops was shot near an African village. The villagers swarmed the carcass, armed with machetes, axes and other edged instruments, and proceeded to have a gigantic meat-eating binge that lasted three days. They dismembered that carcass from inside and out, literally: some people crawled inside the belly cavity and cut their way out, while others stood on the ribs and cut their way in. When an errant machete blade from one side or the other cut into someone on the other side of the skin, there were screams of outrage and anger; but mostly they were too busy eating (yes, even raw meat!) to care.
At the end of three days, all that was left were the remains of the entrails, and the huge bones of the elephant skeleton. Sixty-odd villagers had eaten until they bulged (literally): their stomachs were so distended I was surprised they could still move. Of course, in African heat, with no refrigeration available, the meat had already spoiled by the third day, but they ate and ate and ate so as to waste as little as possible of the precious nutrition deposited on their doorsteps by the Game Department.
Perhaps they should have tried this recipe . . .
Peter
That story doesn't make me hungry.
ReplyDeleteOh my, I recall that recipe from a cookbook put out by the folks at Ma's then-workplace in the very very late 1970's or early 1980's. It has, shall we say, made the rounds. And yet... it is still amusing.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine being hungry enough to eat raw elephant.
ReplyDeleteI am fond of poultry stew. Oh, look, in old school cookbooks rabbit is a poultry animal. Yes, I have served unsuspecting people rabbit.
ReplyDeleteAs to the 'eating the elephant' thingy, it is what hunter-gatherer and semi-hunter-gatherer with some farming cultures do. Eat to gorge when the food is available. Until you get to the technological point of being able to save food reliably in one form or another (canning, smoking, freezing), gorging when fresh meat and veggies and fruit are available is a real thing.
Probably excellent with Tabasco, hare or no hair.
ReplyDeleteYour description of the villagers and the elephant reminds me of the Dogs in Elk story
ReplyDeletehttps://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/dogsinelk.html
I pull a face every time I hear some urban “conservationist” claim that “trophy-hunting wastes meat”…
ReplyDeleteAs though poor people who are starved for protein would waste free meat.
Meat recovery is simply good business when your hunting concession depends on the goodwill ( and lack of poaching) of the locals. In some areas it is mandatory and part of the licence conditions..
For those who do not know, meat-poaching and habitat destruction are the major ecological threats to African wildlife. When you convince a tribal council that they get the meat from wildlife AND GET PAID then for some reason poaching drops off markedly. There is a saying… “If it pays, it stays”.
The other positive aspect of trophy hunting is that such hunting is restricted to a small proportion of animals that have already bred and passed on their genetics. Poachers kill everything.