Dining on Big Bird

"You're awfully cute, but unfortunately for you, you're made of meat."

- Avatar: The Last Airbender

When you take care of hoofstock, especially domestic species, as farmyard keepers do, you end up with lots of unwanted jokes from people about eating your animals.  Many of the pigs that I've worked with have some variation of "bacon" or "ham" or "pork chop" in their name, and in November, there are endless cracks about the turkeys and their imagined upcoming fate.   During my visit to Milwaukee County Zoo a few years back, I saw some fishermen-types in the aquarium building, practically salivating over the Great Lakes display, though this may have had more to do with the trophy aspect than the meat.  

It's a good thing that the animals can't understand what visitors are saying. They'd probably develop some kind of complex.

Over the course of my career, I've only ever actually eaten animals that I've cared for twice.  Once was in college, when I was the teaching assistant for an animal nutrition course, in which the students raised quails and sheep as part of a nutritional study.  At the end of the semester, our professor invited all of the TA's to his house for a thank you dinner.  The appetizer was boiled quail eggs.  The main courses were quail and lamb.

The second was my only zoo-dining experience.  I was working at a safari park, where I made almost exactly no money and lived in a perpetual state of malnourished delirium.  The highlight of my week was every Saturday, when I was able to scavenge leftover pizza from birthday parties... you know, like a particularly undignified vulture.  My parents, who always were supportive of my pursuit of my dream job, offered to chip in a bit to help me with groceries.  That actually just made me even more frugal.  I hate spending my own money... I hated even more the idea of spending someone else's, especially when I was trying to prove that I could make it on my own.

One tragic day, when a female ostrich was struck by a vehicle and killed, I happened to wander onto the scene of the ad hoc necropsy.  Not much of a necropsy - cause of death was quite clear.  So, when I saw my boss getting ready to bury it, I decided on a lark to ask for a drumstick.  To my surprise, I got it.

I had no idea how to cook it.  My first thought was to roast the whole thing in the oven, but that proved impractical, so I cut off smaller chunks to cook.  It was tough and gamey, more like beef or venison than chicken or turkey, possibly as a result of my not knowing what to do with it.  I did get several meals off that leg, honestly tripling my meat consumption for that month.  

Over the course of my life, especially in travels, I've eaten a lot of odd animal products.  I've had alligator and kangaroo and bison, as well as scrambled rhea eggs.  I drank goat blood with the Maasai in East Africa and ate grilled giant grubs in the Amazon.  

This is the only time I ever ate one of my zoo animals, and to be honest, if the opportunity came again with any other, I'd probably pass - or not even think of it as an option.  This was when I was a decade younger and a fair bit wilder and edgier (oh, and hungrier).  These days, I think it would feel too much like eating a coworker.