How Hungry Do You Have To Be?

To eat Grilled Rat?

A friend of mine–at least for the moment–is travelling in Southeast Asia.  He calls it a vacation.  Disney World is a vacation.  Laos–not so much.  And I’m pretty sure that while there are huge mice walking around Disney, there are none on the menus anywhere in the parks.

Here is his Facebook revelation:

Eleven people LIKE that!  This scares me.  I might know these people.  I might have eaten with these people before.  Perhaps they even grilled my bacon cheeseburger on the same grill that grilled a rat.  Oh, the inhumanity!

I wrote a blog about my own Lunch Bucket List a while back in response to a list of 100 things you should eat before you die–and hopefully not RIGHT before you die.  Interestingly enough, while sea urchins, snake, and Spam™ made that list, grilled rat did not.  Neither did sautéed rat, deep-fried rat, fricasseed rat, or rat stew make the list.  Squirrel yes.  Rat–no.

Don’t rats carry the plague?  I guess you could get bird flu from chicken, but I’d face that remote possibility at KFC.  But Bubonic Plague?  I think I’ll pass.

It might taste like chicken . . .so then JUST EAT CHICKEN!  EAT MORE CHIKIN!

Seriously?  Would I even eat at a restaurant that listed RAT on the menu?  I think not.  First of all, you just couldn’t be sure that the HAMBURGER was really beef or not.

From FASAB–I don’t know what Geef is, but I’m not eating that!

And even if it was beef, it might have been grilling right alongside Remy the Rat.  I couldn’t take that chance!

Oh I would eat anything for lunch . . .

But I won’t eat that:

No, I won’t eat THAT!

Or that:

Does this really make you hungry? Of course, with those spines, you could save on toothpicks!

And especially not THAT!

No–not even with a garnish or a lot of beer!

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A Dingo Ate My Deer

Perhaps you recall the friend of mine who “hit a deer.”  She and her husband struck a deer, heard a crash and broken glass, saw something flung to the side of the road, but when they got home there was no damage to the car whatsoever.  There was no evidence a deer ever existed.

Well, her overactive, or mushroom-enhanced, imagination is still at work.

Apparently, something is killing deer behind her house.  It could be her car–we’d never know.  We do not know if these are even “real” deer.

They–her husband and her–think it could be a bobcat.  Rumors suggest they have been seen in Central PA lately.  I think the car is the more likely culprit.

She is afraid this fiend might eat her beagle dog Sammy.  Honestly, I do not know if Sammy exists or not.  I’ve never seen her husband for that matter, but other co-workers claim they have.  I’ll let you decide that one for yourself.

I know how she feels.  We have a miniature dachshund named Sammy, I remember when he was just a puppy thinking that a hawk could swoop down out of the sky and snatch him, just like that commercial for the Direct TV genie.

How do you like my wiener?

But I digress.  In discussing the bobcat theory with someone else, she was told that someone in our area had some exotic pets that got loose.  A panther.  (Not the one from Pittsburgh, though.)  And a python.  We have snow right now.  I’m not sure I’d worry about a python slithering around if you know what I mean.

So at some point, she and her husband, if he actually exists, called the game warden.  He confirmed that some pythons–plural–got loose, but would not confirm the panther.  A python was found in someone’s basement in Hollidaysburg.  The game warden agreed, though, that this particular deer-eating fiend could be a bobcat.

They took pictures of the tracks, but alas, when I asked to see them, she was unable to download them at this time.  Hmmmmm.

But this story does get better.  One day, they see some large black “animal” dragging a deer carcass behind their house.  At last!  A chance to redeem themselves.  Her alleged husband hustles downstairs with binoculars and a camera, but you know how difficult it is to track these deer eating fiends.  He decides he could get a better shot–photo–from the upstairs window.  But by the time he gets upstairs, the black thing and deer carcass are gone.  Imagine that!

Maybe it was a bear.

They don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t a bear.

She thought it could be a large dog.

A dingo ate her deer!

The game warden–called again–thought maybe it was a coyote.

How do you get rid of a coyote?  I’d buy a road runner and order some explosives from ACME myself.  Let him take care of himself so to speak.

So now her nephew has come over to set up a night vision camera to cover her backyard.

I’m sorry, but I had to ask . . . is her nephew real?

So she claims.  But the camera has failed to show anything yet.  Hmmmm.

But I want to give her the benefit of the doubt here.  I really hope she gets something on tape.

Like maybe Big Foot.

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Where’s the Outrage?

While mainstream media and well-meaning, but utterly clueless politicians are diverting your attention to the “problem” of gun control, another threat to our civilized society is going unnoticed.

January 21, 2013 in Chesterfield . . . “County police have arrested one man in connection with a fight in which multiple victims were stabbed.”

January 1, 2013 in Reynoldstown . . . “An argument between two men at a party resulted in several stabbings and the arrest of the suspected stabber, Atlanta police said. . . All five stabbing victims, including two who had stab wounds to the abdominal and legs, were transported to Atlanta Medical Center for treatment. All victims were reported in stable  condition with the exception one  victim who was rushed to surgery in  critical but stable condition.”

February 1, 2013 in Vancouver, Canada . . .”Vancouver police on Thursday night arrested a seemingly deranged man who ran through the hallway of an apartment building stabbing and slicing people at random.  The stabbing rampage left seven people injured, six of which were taken to the hospital and one remains in critical condition, according to officials. Three of those individuals had been released from the hospital as of Friday morning. . . “It appears that a lot of these victims were unrelated to each other and they had no dealings with each other tonight,” Fincham said.  “It was a very vicious, very serious attack. There were multiple victims in this,” he added.

I could provide other examples but I am Googled out at the moment, and distraught with fear that at any moment, a mad suicide knifer could enter my house and slice and dice his way through my unsuspecting family.  And this could happen if our lawmakers don’t take notice and pass stricter knife control laws.

How many people have to suffer before we ban Ginzu’s?  Is it really worth the health and vitality of our children to be able to cut our steak with a steak knife?  Cavemen ate meat for years before anyone invented the Iron Age and tools to cut the meat.  I would rather gnaw my Outback Special without utensils than risk being stabbed by these potentially lethal weapons.  Have you ever looked at that guy sitting all by himself in the booth over there?  With the knife in his hand?  Who knows when he will snap!?  It could be during dessert!  Oh, the inhumanity!

With proper knife legislation, perhaps Mary would have survived the shower attack by Norman Bates.  The movie would still have been suspenseful, but he would have had to bludgeon her with his bare hands (or would it have been his mother’s bare hands?) if we outlawed all potential weapons.

Apparently Al Sharpton agrees, but I’m not sure whether that strengthens or weakens my argument here.

Echoing the commonly-made argument that when guns become too difficult to obtain for even the most determined criminals, they will find other means of violence such as knives, a caller asked: “What happens when the criminal goes to knives, Al?”

“Then you deal with knives,” Sharpton pointedly replied.

But why wait?  Why not be proactive and control all knives and sharp objects now, before more people suffer.  And while we’re at it, why don’t we just make it illegal to kill and maim people with anything?  We should probably make drugs illegal too.

That will solve a lot of problems, won’t it?

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