More Urban Survival

We had a discussion of a lady in Seattle who has learned to eat squirrel.  Here is an older story from Detroit.

To urban hunter, next meal is scampering by
Detroit retiree, 69, supplements his income by living off the land
Charlie LeDuff, The Detroit News, 2 April 2009 (Hat tip: NC).

Detroit - When selecting the best raccoon carcass for the special holiday roast, both the connoisseur and the curious should remember this simple guideline: Look for the paw.

"The paw is old school," says Glemie Dean Beasley, a Detroit raccoon hunter and meat salesman. "It lets the customers know it's not a cat or dog."

Beasley, a 69-year-old retired truck driver who modestly refers to himself as the Coon Man, supplements his Social Security check with the sale of raccoon carcasses that go for as much $12 and can serve up to four. The pelts, too, are good for coats and hats and fetch up to $10 a hide.

Note that Beasley is a licensed furrier.  But his situation is not analogous with the middle class squirrel catcher.  The situation in detroit is a more desperate than that of Seattle.

"Starvation is cheap," he says as he prepares an afternoon lunch of barbecue coon and red pop at his west side home.

His little Cape Cod is an urban Appalachia of coon dogs and funny smells. The interior paint has the faded sepia tones of an old man's teeth; the wallpaper is as flaky and dry as an old woman's hand.

Beasley peers out his living room window. A sushi cooking show plays on the television. The neighborhood outside is a wreck of ruined houses and weedy lots.

"Today people got no skill and things is getting worse," he laments. "What people gonna do? They gonna eat each other up is what they gonna do."

Oddly enough, in England, the gray squirrel is becoming something of a delicasy, and they are hard to find.

Anyone for grey squirrel pie? Victorian delicacy enjoys revival in bid to save red cousins from extinction
Ryan Kisial, Daily Mail (U.K.) 14 January 2012 (Hat tip: NC).

James Hughes Davies, 31, who runs Little Jack Horner’s pie company, sells 60 squirrel pies a week at farmer’s markets and says he could sell dozens more if he could get hold of the animals.

‘The main problem is that I can’t get enough of the squirrels as the demand is so high’, he said.