Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

Every once in a while, you read something that makes you want to never eat out again. Last week, just after I was mourning the closure of a restaurant/bar in Tulsa that I had occasionally enjoyed, I read that this same establishment had experienced “severe fly and roach infestations” in the months prior to its closing for good. Although that isn’t the reason they give for finally closing their doors, the news didn’t set well with me. Sure, it had been over a year since I’d set foot in the place, but I still felt kind of sick. Being me, I decided to dig up some interesting food related stories to share with everyone, because I’m a giver that way.

If you have a weak stomach, I wouldn’t read on.

The black market in Asia is well-known for satisfying even the strangest of appetites. If you have enough cash, you can dine on whatever you want, legal or not. One restaurant got closed down a couple of years ago in China for its apparent willingness to feed wealthy but unscrupulous patrons endangered animals, like the tiger.

I’ve never really understood why you would want to eat a tiger. Not only are they gorgeous and endangered, they are strict carnivores, which means the meat isn’t likely to taste very good at all. If you were deeply curious, and in Asia, why not go for an alley cat? Still not on my list of comestibles, but at least they aren’t a vanishing species.

Wait, though, the story gets better.

They weren’t selling tiger meat. They did, in fact, have a tiger caged up, but stripes wasn’t destined for a dinner table. You see, his urine was too valuable for the restaurant to give him up. What they were actually serving their uppity patrons was donkey meat, thoroughly marinated in tiger urine, to give it just the right flavor. If you ask me, those diners got what they deserved.

It’s all well and good when Karma bites someone that deserves it, but that’s not always the case. Just this morning I read about the troubles that a US meat packing plant in Texas is having. Seems one of their employees is a serial killer, charged now with 70 counts in the deaths of 71 missing employees over the last 17 years. Law enforcement was apparently already looking into the issue, when the discovery of human bones in a rendering plant sped them up a bit.

For those of you that don’t know, a rendering plant takes the leftover bits from meat production, and turns them into other things, like dog food, usually by cooking it into oblivion.

While it is hard to imagine something like this happening at all, the hardest part for me is trying to imagine what the surviving coworkers of Jeremiah Burroughs must be feeling. He was a Gulf War veteran, with PTSD, and probably severe paranoia, but to his coworkers he was just a normal guy.

Sure, he had problems, but wars aren’t good for you. Still living with your mother at his age isn’t a great sign, either, but plenty of normal people do things like that to make ends meet. Normal people do not kill their coworkers and process their bodies like meat.

About four people per year, that we know of, got processed this way and shipped out with the rest of the burgers. For seventeen years. That's a lot of accidental cannibals.

I don’t know about you, but I’m having salad for dinner.

Cheers,

Michelle