Ok "oldman"...I'll finish the story, since you found the rat part so funny....
It's 6:30 pm, we are walking along the railroad tracks on our way to the landfill. We see a nice young spring bunny on the tracks ahead of us. Bingo, one head shot by my friend Dave. We lay him by the tracks and mark the spot so we can pick him up later. (in those days we shot a LOT of our own meat. Rats are fun, rabbits are food!)
We spend a couple of hours at the landfill, hitting our "personal best" of 299 rats. It's coming up on 9:00 pm and on our way back home we remember that bunny we shot. We locate it, field dress it and carry it back to Dave's house. This rabbit weighs perhaps 1 1/2 lbs dressed and Dave asks his mom to fry it up for us...we were young and always hungry. She agrees.
Along come's Dave's little brother, about ten years old. He smells food frying and wants to know what it is. I tell him it is a big buck rat that Dave shot in the head, so we decided to bring him home and fry him up. The little brother is skeptical and asks his mom...she replies "Of course it's rat meat! We ate them all the time when I was young!". The kid is convinced.
So he starts asking if he can have a piece of rat. Of course we say no...not enough meat to go around. The kid starts begging...then asking his mom...then crying, yelling "I want some rat meat too!!!" Dave and I are about to poop ourselves, and mom keeps a straight face...telling the kid that the guys have the final say.
Finally, the "rat" is fried and we split him up and start to chow down. Mom even made some "rat gravy" from the grease. It was delicious! Two starving 18 year old boys chomping on a tender Spring rabbit while Dave's little brother is at the table crying, begging us for a piece of rat to eat!
Finally I gave in and gave him a front leg...I told the kid it was a "wing" and he never questioned why rats had wings, but focused on chomping on that front leg. He absolutely loved it and wanted to know if we were going rat hunting again soon. Dave patiently explained that only the biggest bull rats were worth eating, because the others were too small to fry. We agreed to see if we could get another one soon.
The kid went to school the next day and told all his friends he had eaten fried rat, with rat gravy, for supper last night. He never did have a lot of friends...he had even less after that.
We never told him the truth. For all I know he might have fried up more rats as he got older, I left town shortly afterwards...jobs, Viet Nam, more jobs, marriage, and I never saw Dave or that town again. I remember about that night from time to time. To this day I still laugh when I remember that little kid whining ...."
C'mon Mom, I want some rat meat too. Please...Please!!!!" You can't make stuff like that up...it either happened or it didn't...
Regards,
Kindly 'Ol Uncle
