Fried Field Rat a la Thai

"What you have to eat, fried rat?" Americans classically asked this question after a friend's methane netherhole expulsion.

"It wasn't me." The guilty party protested without forgiveness.

Rat, owl, vulture, and crow are four animals Americans will never eat and only owls will eat crow. I'm sure there are several other animals lacking from any menu of the 50 states. Seagulls, seals,jellyfish as well as a legion of endangered species, especially whale, which I ate as a child in Boston fish market next to Faniel Hall.

But last night I ate fried field rat or noo yang.

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Mint had spent the last week in Cambodian border town and brought down several fried rats for her cousin, uncle, and me. Her cousin opened the plastic plastic and was immediately transported to a rapture like a glue-sniffer huffing a tube of Duont after a year's sabbatical. The uncle was dancing like a trained bear in anticipation of feasting on his two rat carcasses. needless to say my enthusiasm was a little more decorous.

"You no want eat." Mint was upset. Cooking rat takes hours. She had saved me the largest corpse. We were thinking about getting back together. If I didn't eat it, she would have been insulted by my refusal, so Thais have thin skins and long memories.

"Who say I don't want to eat rat?" I gave to only man money to buy 6 large bottles of Leo.

Mint happily fried the rat and cut the body into sixths.

It still looked like a rat and not Mickey Mouse either

New York rat on a plate.

"Why you not eat?" Mint had her arms crossed. Everyone else asked the same question.

"Wait for it not to be hot."

Two minutes later I cracked off a leg. The meat was dark. I took a bite.

It does not taste like chicken or pig or beef.

Goof, but something entirely different yet familiar.

I finished it all.

Strangely the street dogs wouldn't eat the scraps.

Mint was happy and the assembled Thais said, "James not same other farangs. he eat same Thai."

"No." There's no thing I won't eat. "Chicken feet."

Bleech.

But rat?

We ordered more for next week.

I think in a previous article i claimed to have eaten rat.

That wasn't true.

But now it is.

For a related article click on this URL

http://www.mangozeen.com/chicken-messiahs.htm