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This Just In From the Squirrel-Eating Desk At the Reader

Mmm, burgoo.
Mmm, burgoo. Photo: Michael Boyd, courtesy the Reader

“Somewhere along the way, squirrel declined in popularity as a game animal, replaced by bigger quarry, such as deer and turkey,” Mike Sula observes in his epic account of man vs. cute furry rodent in this week’s Reader. Yet we find a surprising number of squirrel-protein-based entries in our own archive. We don’t know why that is, but that’s about the only question on the topic that doesn’t get a workout in Sula’s piece, which ranges from practical considerations (“You can see why it’s preferable to shoot a squirrel in the head, both for the sake of the animal and its meat”) to ecological ones (“People cry about how much corn it takes and how much land it takes to make a cow… Well, squirrels don’t have any of those issues”). Plus there are great photos from a squirrel hunt Sula attended, that are sure to eliminate the few remaining vegans reading the Reader food section after Sula’s previous meat-driven explorations. Read the whole absorbing thing here, a side note by Kate Schmidt here, and listen to Sula talking about the piece with Steve Edwards at WBEZ. Oh, and if you pick up a paper Reader, be sure to note the accidental symmetry between front and back page headlines.[Reader]

This Just In From the Squirrel-Eating Desk At the Reader