17 Aug 2012
Chicken of the Trees

We ate squirrel when I was a kid, and I've been squirrel hunting in some of the same southern Indiana woods described in the article. I remember that it took quite a few squirrels to make a meal. It always struck me as a bit like rabbit, but even more rubbery - we always had fried squirrel, not the stews and soups described here.

At some point we stopped eating squirrels in this country. Certainly the very first Americans ate them in abundance, as did the first European settlers, who cleared the ancient forests and issued bounties on the rodent plagues that ravaged their crops; in colonial Pennsylvania authorities offered hunters three pence per squirrel killed. It was the colonists' skill in bagging them with their long-barreled rifles that gave them an edge on the Redcoats during the Revolution.

(link) [Chicago Reader]

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