Media was reporting yesterday that Huckabee, in an effort to gain popular appeal with South Carolinans, bragged about eating squirrel in college fried in a popcorn popper. He did not appear to be joking. This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that not only is Huckabee squirrelly, he's a liar too.
I happen to have inside information about this one, since I spent a lot of time in West Virginia growing up, and I've hunted squirrel myself. (Not anymore; I'm a vegetarian.) Some people like squirrel, some abhore it, but there are really only two reasons for eating squirrel: 1) for the sport of hunting it, or 2) because you have serious trouble putting meat on the table. Squirrels are tough and gamey, and they have precious little meat for all the trouble. They're not such a delicacy that they can be compared to digging through a shell for a tiny bite of crab.
To hunt squirrel right, you need a dog that's been specially trained for the purpose. It can take all day to get just a few, because squirrels in wild don't just come up to you like on a college campus. No matter how many you get, you won't have enough to feed all your relatives when you get back, which is okay because not everyone is going to want any.
When you get home everyone will want to hear the story of the epic game hunt and they will critique your technique. You better have only used one shot per squirrel, or the consensus will be that you paid too much for it. The dogs will hang around while you clean the squirrel--outside please, gramma doesn't want that bloody thing in her house--because there are some parts of a squirrel even a hillbilly won't eat. It's a messy job; the least of your problems is finding a pot to cook it in.
Which brings me to my questions. First, how did Huck get his squirrels? He couldn't have taken dogs and shotgun around campus, and if he went off hunting in the woods he would have cooked them out there, too. He must have captured those tame little squirrels that come up to you on park benches for a bite of peanut butter sandwhich. Why? Was the food in the dorm that bad? After snaring the little critters in an unsportsmanlike way, how did he clean them? The only conceivable place he could have done it would have been the biology lab, with the dissection equipment. Then he took the bodies back to the dorm to fry in a popcorn popper? Something's smelling a little gamey here.
He could have brought them cleaned from home, maybe stored in the freezer. I've known a lot of people who kept venison, rabbit or even bear in the freezer, but squirrel? If he brought it to the dorm already cleaned wouldn't he have cooked it first, too?
Last but not least, if you're going to get all folksy and appeal to poor country people as "one of them," why do you put the part in the story you made up about eating squirrel, that you ate it at college? Did you think people were going to identify with the squirrel part and not notice the education gap? And what squirrel eaters in the fifties or sixties who made it to college broadcast the fact that they ate squirrel? Being a hillbilly hasn't always been fashionable.
Huckabee is not only a stupid liar, he's a squirrelly one at that.
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