Read Online Eating Aliens: One Man's Adventures Hunting Invasive Animal Species by Jackson Landers - Free Book Online
Authors: Jackson Landers
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actually not anything like the rigid, bony shell of a turtle; rather, it’s made up of scaly plates of something like very thick skin, called scutes. The armadillo has a big scute on each end of its body, with nine smaller ones in the middle, which allow it some flexibility.
The armadillo we were chasing began to tire and slow down, but then so did Daniel and I. Neither of us was really much of a soccer player. Getting low on energy, I decided it was time to plan an endgame. With a final burst of speed, I took a running jump and put a foot down on the armadillo’s tail, stopping both of us short. I drew a long, sharp hunting knife from its sheath on my belt and wondered for a fraction of a second how to get through the armor before settling on the base of the neck. In one swift motion, the poor little bugger was dead.
You probably won’t get many opportunities to examine the belly of an armadillo, so I suggest you take advantage when a chance comes your way. Curiously, the underside is covered with sparse but thick hairs that give way to scales on the legs. There aren’t a whole lot of animals that sport both scales and hair.
I butchered the armadillo within a few minutes of the kill. The process was a bit awkward, what with the armor. The bulk of the meat appeared to be in the hefty hindquarters, so I carved those out and peeled the rear scute from them. I examined the stomach contents and found mostly grubs, a few yellow jackets, and some plant matter that I couldn’t identify.
The meat was a rich, deep red that reminded me of whitetail venison. I wrapped up the hindquarters in a plastic bag and placed them in a cooler full of ice. It would take some homework to figure out what to do with them. There is a tradition of hunting and eating them in Central America and a cuisine that goes along with that, but you can’t exactly open your ordinary American cookbook to the armadillo chapter and dive right into it.
I’ve since cooked armadillo a few times, and it’s like a cross between chicken and pork. The meat starts out a deep red but turns white as it is cooked. There’s nothing wrong with the taste, and in a blind test I think that most people would be fine with it. Yet — strangely, after all the wild animals I’ve eaten — something sort of gives me the creeps when I’m chewing it. It may just take some getting used to.
Would-be armadillo hunters should be aware that, like human beings, some armadillos can carry leprosy (now often called “Hansen’s disease.”) The disease is most often found among armadillos close to the Gulf Coast, because of particular soil conditions that foster the bacteria that causes it. Cooking kills the bacteria just as surely as it kills other foodborne pathogens like E. coli. And even though ninety-five percent of humans are naturally immune to the disease (and simple antibiotics provide an effective cure), it’s still not a smart idea to handle dead armadillos unless you have really done your homework.
We didn’t see any more pigs that night, and Daniel had to pack things in by midnight, as he had to be at work bright and early. Bob and I drove back to Virginia that morning with an armadillo but without a pig. Already, though, we were making plans to return to Georgia for another try.
I finally got my chance to cook a wild pig five months later. As one of the few specialists in hunting and eating invasive species, I get a lot of strange e-mail. Some of that correspondence is from random people inviting me to go hunting with them. I’ve had astoundingly good luck with taking strangers up on their invitations to drive hundreds or thousands of miles to hunt odd things with them in even odder places. It turns out that most people aren’t serial killers, and there’s little danger in wandering around strange wilderness areas with them while they’re heavily armed. Anecdotally, anyway.
This is what happened right about when I needed to bag a pig for keeps. I actually got
The armadillo we were chasing began to tire and slow down, but then so did Daniel and I. Neither of us was really much of a soccer player. Getting low on energy, I decided it was time to plan an endgame. With a final burst of speed, I took a running jump and put a foot down on the armadillo’s tail, stopping both of us short. I drew a long, sharp hunting knife from its sheath on my belt and wondered for a fraction of a second how to get through the armor before settling on the base of the neck. In one swift motion, the poor little bugger was dead.
You probably won’t get many opportunities to examine the belly of an armadillo, so I suggest you take advantage when a chance comes your way. Curiously, the underside is covered with sparse but thick hairs that give way to scales on the legs. There aren’t a whole lot of animals that sport both scales and hair.
I butchered the armadillo within a few minutes of the kill. The process was a bit awkward, what with the armor. The bulk of the meat appeared to be in the hefty hindquarters, so I carved those out and peeled the rear scute from them. I examined the stomach contents and found mostly grubs, a few yellow jackets, and some plant matter that I couldn’t identify.
The meat was a rich, deep red that reminded me of whitetail venison. I wrapped up the hindquarters in a plastic bag and placed them in a cooler full of ice. It would take some homework to figure out what to do with them. There is a tradition of hunting and eating them in Central America and a cuisine that goes along with that, but you can’t exactly open your ordinary American cookbook to the armadillo chapter and dive right into it.
I’ve since cooked armadillo a few times, and it’s like a cross between chicken and pork. The meat starts out a deep red but turns white as it is cooked. There’s nothing wrong with the taste, and in a blind test I think that most people would be fine with it. Yet — strangely, after all the wild animals I’ve eaten — something sort of gives me the creeps when I’m chewing it. It may just take some getting used to.
Would-be armadillo hunters should be aware that, like human beings, some armadillos can carry leprosy (now often called “Hansen’s disease.”) The disease is most often found among armadillos close to the Gulf Coast, because of particular soil conditions that foster the bacteria that causes it. Cooking kills the bacteria just as surely as it kills other foodborne pathogens like E. coli. And even though ninety-five percent of humans are naturally immune to the disease (and simple antibiotics provide an effective cure), it’s still not a smart idea to handle dead armadillos unless you have really done your homework.
We didn’t see any more pigs that night, and Daniel had to pack things in by midnight, as he had to be at work bright and early. Bob and I drove back to Virginia that morning with an armadillo but without a pig. Already, though, we were making plans to return to Georgia for another try.
I finally got my chance to cook a wild pig five months later. As one of the few specialists in hunting and eating invasive species, I get a lot of strange e-mail. Some of that correspondence is from random people inviting me to go hunting with them. I’ve had astoundingly good luck with taking strangers up on their invitations to drive hundreds or thousands of miles to hunt odd things with them in even odder places. It turns out that most people aren’t serial killers, and there’s little danger in wandering around strange wilderness areas with them while they’re heavily armed. Anecdotally, anyway.
This is what happened right about when I needed to bag a pig for keeps. I actually got
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