How many bunnies end up as roadkill?
Columbo eats squirrel chili! Around 1:00.
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Squirrels can carry–and transmit–Kreuzfeldt Jakob disease as well as rabies and other unpleasant things. If you are offered to taste squirrel, it might be better to refuse.
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Many animals can carry BSE including Cows. Do not eat Brains or Spinal Tissue or Squirrels that appear to be drunk and your risk is pretty low.
From the CDC “Small rodents (like squirrels, hamsters, guinea pigs, gerbils, chipmunks, rats, and mice) and lagomorphs (including rabbits and hares) are almost never found to be infected with rabies”
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Ditto. My husband grew up eating squirrel, rabbit, quail, etc., as his father hunted. My parents didn’t hunt, but our next door neighbor did, and kept my mother well supplied with venison and the occasional cut of beaver or other odd critter. Elk, moose and other large game are also commonplace in Michigan (my native state). All quite delicious if cooked properly.
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Not only did we eat squirrel (I only remember that a couple of times, admit was chicken-ish) quail, pheasant, duck, and rabbit, my father brought back a deer every year. We are nearly everything, and the hides were tanned for gloves and purse. (My father hunted and believed that if you killed it you were beholden to the animal to use everything possible)
It served me well…when. I grew up and began to feel my hunger for travel, I am fearless at trying almost anything put on front of me at least once. (I have to confess I am not sure I could face balut).
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None I haven’t seen any rabbit roadkill. Driving 2 miles into town I’m guaranteed to see at least 3 squirrels
Food for the ravens
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I don’t know about KJD, but DO know that while in theory, ANY mammal can contract rabies, squirrels do so rarely, if ever. As a child, I was bitten by a squirrel and all the doctor did was cauterize the wound, because, he said, rabies was not an issue. Also, while cooking does not destroy prions, the cause of KJD, it does kill viruses, and rabies is a viral disease.
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Well, in 45 years of driving, I’m responsible for two rabbits, one squirrel, and one chipmunk. And I cried over every one of them.
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Well, perhaps I was thinking of squirrel brains, based on this article:
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/29/us/kentucky-doctors-warn-against-a-regional-dish-squirrels-brains.html
But I would still avoid it.
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Now I am wondering if there are Blue Grass Oysters … y’know, the squirrel counterpart to Rocky Mountain Oysters.
Well, I never saw an oyster that I had an argument with! Although my wife got a bad one once.
I’m not sure you understand what rocky mountain oysters actually are. 
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Well, yes, I did. But I chose to overlook it in my love of normal oysters. Good friends of ours, a Spanish couple, were once in the US for a post-doc. They both knew English quite well, but not perfectly. One day the wife went into a butcher shop and asked if they had “balls.” That’s when she learned the term “Rocky mountain oysters.” On another occasion she wanted to earn some money doing hairdos. She put a sign on the bulletin board in the dormitory they were staying in: “Blow jobs $5”
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My mother worked as a maid in Hoboken when she first arrived from Germany. Her German employers spoke English but my mother was learning on the job. She didn’t understand why the husband, chuckling, always asked what the weather was when visibility was poor. Then the wife heard Mom reply “fuggy”, read hubs the riot act, and explained Mom’s gaffe. Later, she worked as a hair stylist, then manicurist, and also had to learn to call the procedure a blow OUT. Later still, when I was college age and we watched Jacques Pepin on TV, she always laughed when he put a “cookie shit” into the oven. Didn’t stop both of us from having crushes on him, even though she was 60+ by then, old enough to be his mother. She’s long gone, I’m over 70, carrying the torch for both of us…
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Too bad. I was just thinking that over here (Scotland) eating grey squirrel might be a way of helping our red squirrels (who should not be eaten as they are endangered). The greys are responsible for bringing a disease that decimated the red population.
That said, I’d be useless at killing, skinning, and gutting.
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Did that edition have this cover? This came up in one of my Facebook feeds the other day:
Accompanying text: THING I LEARNED TODAY: The first edition of The Joy of Cooking, in 1931, featured on the cover an illustration of a woman fighting a dinosaur with a mop.
Says Wikipedia: The book was illustrated by Rombauer’s daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker, who directed the art department at John Burroughs School. Working weekends during the winter of 1930–31, Marion designed the cover, which depicted Saint Martha of Bethany, the patron saint of cooking, slaying a dragon.
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That one had long lost its dust cover…the fabric was blue if I recall.
It was interesting reading (including old grocery receipts tucked into the pages) but I dont remember using it much.
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