A Squirrelly Tale

At my retirement home, my three companions and I started lunch talking about fish and lingered after talking about hunting and guns. The discussion caused thoughts to swirl about in my head with ideas that I’ll be posting with blogs on food and guns for a week.

My father did not hunt or fish. Uncle Lon fished in Caddo Lake, and bought catfish home for Aunt Lou to fry for us when we visited in Rockwall. Uncle Dick came to Fort Worth from his ranch in far West Texas and brought quail, which my mother cooked, but she refused to eat “those dear little birds.” I know nothing about fishing or hunting.

Dodie grew up on a farm in the Rio Grande Valley. Not “The Valley” near Brownsville but on the New Mexico border near El Paso. I was not surprised when she said her father and husband were hunters, or that she cooked the game they brought home.

Elizabeth and her husband were married for 57 years and lived most of that time in the Dallas area. Not exactly big game country. Her husband both fished and hunted, and she cooked everything he caught. She loved going to the Gulf and cooking fresh-caught fish on the beach. If her husband killed a deer, he took it to a commercial butcher and had the meat wrapped to put in the freezer. She said, “I cooked all sorts of things: rabbits, ducks, squirrels.”

“You ate squirrels?”
“Yes. They are tender, if they are young.”

Dodie agreed. She cooked all kinds of game, including squirrels.

I never suspected that these genteel little old ladies were experts at cooking wild critters. I tell people, “I know everything.” That’s a joke. I don’t know how to cook squirrel.