Rodents for World Peace

East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet? I think not - not if we come together and find common ground. And what, I ask you, can bring the people of different cultures together better than the devouring of rodents? Here are excerpts from two separate articles in The New Yorker; in the first a reporter goes to Kentucky where people enjoy eating squirrel, even though it has recently been suggested that squirrel brains may carry a variant of mad cow disease. "'Here's how you eat one of these things,' he says, lifting the skull up with his finger tips. Seen in profile, it looks like the head of a monstrous ant: streamlined and mechanical, with buckteeth, and incisors curving down the sides like whiskers. First Rector nibbles off the neck meat, then the cheeks, then he pulls off the blue tongue. When all that's left is the braincase, he picks up a teaspoon and smacks it down smartly on top. Inside, beneath the eggshell-thin surface, lies a pink organ about as large as the first joint of my index finger, stained inky black between its lobes. If some infectious agent lurks there, no pressure cooker could have killed it: brain tissue from a a mad cow can pass on the disease even after baking in a seven-hundred-degree oven. 'Ya want some?' Rector asks, holding the glistening brain toward me. Before I can answer, he pops it into his mouth. 'Too late,' he says." The second article (in the magazine the following week) is by a man who traveled to the village of Luogang, in the Guangdong Province of China, to try the local delicacy - rat. He went to two restaurants with the only-in-the-Orient names "Highest Ranking Wild Flavor Restaurant" and "New Eight Sceneries Wild Flavor Food City." You have a unique option at the second restaurant: "I decided to order the Spicy and Salty Mountain Rat. This time, when the waitress asked about my preference in sizes, I said, pleased with my boldness, 'Big Rat." 'Come and choose it.' 'What?' 'Pick out the rat you want.' I followed one of the kitchen workers to a shed behind the restaurant, where cages were stacked atop one another. Each cage contained more than thirty rats. The shed did not smell good. The worker pointed at a rat. 'How about this one?' 'Um, sure.' He put on a glove, opened the cage, and picked up the chosen rat. It was about the size of a softball. 'Is it O.K.?' he said. 'Yes.' 'Are you certain?' I nodded. Suddenly, the worker flipped his wrist, swung the rat into the air by the tail, and let go. The rat made a neat arc. There was a soft thud when its head struck the cement floor. There wasn't much blood. The worker grinned. 'You can go back to the dining room now,' he said. 'We'll bring it out to you soon.' All men are brothers.