Last night at the Strip House, my Filipino Fort Worthian friend told a story about the real-life husband of the girl he used to consider his “work wife”. I've met both of them and, long story short, she's amazing, he's an asshole, and I'm not just saying that because she's amazing. Anyway, my friend started out by relating that the husband's been unemployed two years, and in that time's become an avid foodie – an intro you'd think would lead into him becoming an amazing cook and deciding to open a restaurant, or go to culinary school, or throw extravagant dinner parties. But here's where things went instead: the guy started growing vegetables in his back yard, and of course a squirrel started devouring them. So he traps the squirrel. And drowns it in his bathtub. And cooks it. And eats it.
My best friend's family are borderline genius Cajuns from Bunkie, LA. The dad – whose title I believe was Head of the East TX Psychiatric Association – and the brothers – one of whom's now a clinical psychiatrist dealing with real killers in upstate NY – used to take out powerline-munching squirrels in their Dallas backyard with a .22, and tally their kills on a sheet of paper tacked up over the washing machine. That seemed normal. I read in the Times that in England, there's a sizable and respectable squirrel-eating movement motivated by both culinary adventure a need to thin out interloping gray squirrels to preserve the native red population (“Save a red, eat a gray!”). That seems at least normal enough. The Times also had a story about people using everything from electric fences to shovels to kill off garden-destroying varmints. All of them had fairly normal reactions (anguish-to-acceptance-of-necessity) to their bloody deeds, except this one self-described Brooklyn yuppie who, after seeing the damage a squirrel'd wreaked on her rooftop garden, said: “There was a wow factor, like when one looks out at the aftermath of a really, really, really destructive thunderstorm and says, ‘Look at that tree branch on the Volvo.'” So she drowned the squirrel in a rain barrel.
One blogger who read the story named her his “Urban Bunghole of the Year”. I don't think Bunghole begins to describe it. There's something deeply troubling about a method of killing that involves you standing over the victim and dispassionately watching it thrash. As the blogger noted, the American Veterinary Medical Association agrees: “Drowning is not a means of euthanasia and is inhumane.”
I also asked a restaurant PR friend if he knew of any hardcore, slaughter-my-own-pig chefs who'd actually drown a squirrel. He did not, and was alarmed that someone would. So this guy who I'd thought was just an asshole, might be a burgeoning serial killer – though depending on your perspective, many serial killers are just really big assholes.
But let's take this to a happy place: I spotted the giant balloon above on my way to Wogies for lunch today, where I met the guys from last night, plus a Pakistani-born plastic surgeon (one of my friends has a self-confessed compulsion to befriend Subcontinentals; the Subcontinentals he has befriended all apparently know this). As it often does, the talk turned to balls, specifically whether it'd be possible to Botox them into smoothness, just like the giant balloon. The plastic surgeon said he smelled a research paper, and there was talk of purchasing smoothballs.com, just in case.
Tonight, I went to my friend Katie's 4th Annual Braise-Off, an amateur cooking event she throws to benefit The Food Bank for New York City. There were around 20 entries, and everyone got to try them all. It doesn't matter if you're a foodie or not, grazing on 20 accomplished amateurs' slow-cooked meats is a beautiful experience, eventual colonoscopy be damned.
Before the feasting started, I conversed with my friend Kara's boyfriend (above's him, Kara, and Katie). He's around 6'5", and keeps kosher. We were BS'ing about the similarity of rednecks in mine and Kara's home states (Texas and Maine), and he told me about traveling to Western Virginia (moonshine capital of the world) to hang out with a college friend's family. He'd been a little nervous about the trip, because his friend's grandfather had once held the illustrious title Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, but his friend said not to worry, that his grandfather was wholly reformed. Sure enough, the former Wizard was warm and welcoming, and actually prepared a kosher meal for his Yankee Jew guest.
Whether or not Botox can smooth out balls into wrinkle-free balloons remains to be seen. But it's good to know that time can smooth out even the most violent of nuts. As to why I'm more inclined to believe in redemption for Grand Wizards than for squirrel-drowners, I'm not sure.
I hope it's not just because I want to bang the squirrel guy's wife.
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