A recent article in Oxford American resurrected my latent desire for jerky. A friend from Alabama asked me if I had ever had frog jerky. I grew up in the deepest of the Deep South, but I have never even thought about frog jerky before. I have had beef jerky, of course, while hiking – and buffalo jerky, ostrich jerky, turkey jerky and deer jerky. I know of a man who claims to cure gator jerky and rattlesnake jerky in a smoker. That is some murky jerky in my book.
Squirrel or armadillo jerky? I’ll pass.
Dogs get run over all the time and no one would ever make dog jerky. That is sacrilege; so do not send me emails for even mentioning it. Cats too – although they do make decent Frisbees after a few passes by an 18-wheeler (in the form of sail cats of which I have written about before).
He smiled indicating neither a joke nor a serious thought, but somewhere in between, like how George W. Bush used to smirk after saying something he considered genius (which was seldom the case).
Using that smirking jerky criteria, I had an uncle that jerked a lot from a nerve ailment, but I didn’t notice my aunt trying to make jerky out of him (I am now doing my best Dubya grin for effect). Then again, when the old man went missing a year later, she served a hell of a lot of mystery meat she claimed was deer. Perhaps she meant “dear.”
During one meal, I swear I remember a tattoo on what she claimed was pot roast. Could have been something else. I hope it was. The cooked artwork looked a lot like a decorative heart with her name scrolled in script. I had seen that tattoo on his upper bicep, so naturally I paused before taking a bite, wondering. But it was so damned good with mustard greens and her special gravy that I pushed the thought out of my mind. Of all the things I’ve done in my life that I wish I could change, being a cannibal ranks pretty high on the list. But technically, I suppose it is not cannibalism if you don’t know what you are eating, right? Even so, I do not want to be even an accidental cannibal.