#5 When it Comes to Eating Rats, Always go with the Free Range

So people eat rats here and it’s a pretty common to see someone walking around our neighborhood with a bucket of grilled rats. For about 8 small, skewered, grilled rats it costs 30 cents and is considered a novelty here, especially by our neighbors. I have had the special opportunity to try them and they aren’t actually all that bad. The preferred method of preparing them is taking the already grilled rats, cut them in half, clean them out, and fry them with some oil, salt and onion. And if you are really into fine rat-dining, you can spice them up with a little bit of lime juice. But the thing you need to be careful of is NOT to eat rats from the house, only the “matu” or the wild. But that seems weird right? To actually eat rats but to also be concerned with where they came from? THEY ARE RATS! How could they get worse?! But apparently when we ask about this rule, their response is that they smell weird. And I don’t even think they could ever tell the difference, they just say that and really do question it. This took me a while for it to make sense, but then the rats in our house proceeded to eat a hole in our glue sticks and take them away when the glue leaked out, which just goes to show that maybe there is some truth to foul-smelling-house-rats-that-eat-glue-and-plastic. And who would want to eat them? This is the 40 piece bucket option in our neighborhood. No mashed potatoes or coleslaw though which is the downside.