File under "look what you made me do, Addison":
It's the Post and 2012, and not the NYT and 2007, there are certain verities in features on Stephen Rinella:
The Post, today:
Steven Rinella grew up hunting and eating squirrel in rural
Twin Lake, Mich.
So when he moved to Fort Greene, Brooklyn, six years ago,
and squirrels began showing up by the dozen to steal the ripening tomatoes from
his apartment’s 800-square-foot garden, he figured he’d make a meal out of
them, too.
“Sometimes, I get such a craving for squirrel meat that I’ll
go to extremes to get it,” writes Rinella, 38, in his new hunting memoir, “Meat
Eater,” out Sept. 4.
That includes rigging up snap-type rat traps to capture the
small game, skinning them over his kitchen sink, cooking them with a “Jamie
Oliver-inspired” recipe and serving the resulting dish — lemon-thyme squirrel —
to his wife, Katie.
“The method is of very questionable legality,” he admits in
the book.
Hunting squirrel by trap is technically illegal in New York
state (and the state-approved methods of capture — by hunting bow or firearm —
are banned in New York City) -
but, since they are nuisance animals, according to the state’s Environmental
Conservation Law, they may be killed at any time in any manner by the owners or
occupants if they are injuring property.
The Times, five years ago:
He had better luck with squirrels — eight in all, though one had to be rejected for mange. He caught them in the same backyard using both a mink trap and a modified rat trap. The rat trap just knocked them out, he explained. “So then I went out and thumped them with a hammer."
(Technically, the state requires that if you want a squirrel for dinner you need to hunt it, not trap it.)
As I pointed out back then, in a post that evidently caused Mr. Rinella some distress:
Without getting all Teddy, it would seem that someone who says “If I’m not cooking with game, I don’t think it’s any fun,” would be aware of relevant game laws, especially the ones indended to prevent suffering of the kind a rat trap/hammer combo would inflict. Also, there is something insufferably droll in the use of "technically." The inference I take is "New York State game laws are beyond the concern of DI/DO readers, who are preoccupied with nanny poaching and where to get parts for the Viking, and are, as such, technicalities." One would never say, "technically, the state of Idaho requires trout to be taken with a fly or angling rod, rather than dynamite," or "technically, dogs die in hot cars."
In this case, DI/DO and the Post readers are united in their blithe unconcern for NY state game laws, which are, for both constituencies, "technicalities." Perhaps this can be a building block for a new era of concord and amity among Times and Post readers!
Comments