SNAKE EATER

The thought of recipes brings back wonderful memories of the many years I spent in the military, seeking out and finding unusual food dishes in many exotic and often strange places.

It all started when I became a survival instructor for the Army Rangers.  I spent literally months in the wilderness with a book in one hand and a box of Baggies in the other before I became proficient enough to teach that course.

Everything I could identify as 'edible' I would collect and memorize, and test, and it finally got to the point to where I could walk out in the woods and point in almost any direction and identify something that was edible, whether it was a tuber, leaf, flower, plant, bug, moss, root, bark, or animal.

I eventually discovered that the wilderness is a veritable smorgasbord and will provide a feast for anyone who can identify what's edible, and will kill you very quickly and without mercy if you try to eat the wrong thing.

The course I taught was not simply identifying what was edible in the wild, but also the means, by which it can be gathered, prepared, cooked, or - in the case of animals - caught.

The expression, 'a country boy can survive,' eventually became an acronym for my course. It even reminds me of that old joke about the difference between a Yankee zoo and a Rebel zoo.

Never heard that one?

The difference between a Yankee zoo and a Rebel zoo is; a Yankee Zoo lists the animal’s name, genus, species and so forth, Rebel Zoo simply shows the recipe.

Anyway, back to my survival course.  Being a typical show-off and hard-corps Ranger, I would start the class by biting off the head of a live chicken or live snake, then turn the body up to drink the warm salty blood as it trickled or spewed out.  If it was a snake I'd usually skin a part of it and take a juicy bite of the warm pink flesh, making groaning noises of great satisfaction as I chewed and swallowed the raw meat.

  Naturally there were times when I varied the class opening by eating a handful of grubs, worms, or insects.

These acts instantly drew the solid attention of the students to the subject of my class - survival.

The classroom portion of the course lasted only 16 hours, then It was off to the bush to teach the - hands on - part of the course.  The final graduation exercises were conducted after the students had starved for several days in their own, often-futile attempts, to find anything edible in the wilderness.

Even Army chow itself was often hard to identify.  When I first enlisted we were fed K-Rations, dated 1946.  That was changed to C-Rations, then to LRRP Rations, and now they serve MRE's, which stand for Meals Ready to Eat.  Unfortunately, I think the quality is definitely going in the wrong direction.  The old K-Rations and C-Rations were quite tasty if you learned to prepare them properly. (I especially liked the ground gopher guts).

I dined on MRE's a few weeks ago when my nephew was home from the Army, and I can state - with absolute conviction - I'll take the survival food over them any ole day.  MRE's are like eating unflavored Styrofoam.

As for eating rotten fermented fish heads, monkey brains while the monkey is still alive and screaming, and many of the other exotic dishes I have seen - and eaten - around the world, I'll save for another story.

Bon appetite!