Huckabee and the Squirrel

Mack Hall

Mike Huckabee ate Rocky the Flying Squirrel!

Okay, he really didn’t, but he did state while campaigning in Las Vegas that when he was in college he cooked squirrels in his popcorn popper.

This naturally leads the American voter to ask two salient questions about why a college student cooked squirrels in a popcorn popper: Was this because of a shortage of popcorn? Or of a shortage of neighborhood cats?
One imagines Senator Edwards ordering squirrel in French – but only so that he can sue it. Or Senator Hillary Rodham dropping a squirrel at thirty feet with only her Glare of Death.

What we are dealing with, my fellow Americans, is a candidate for the Presidency of the United States who may have struck on a solution for starvation in third-world countries: let them eat squirrel.

President Bill Clinton might interrupt to maintain that he personally saw squirrels bullying union culinary workers during the cauci in Las Vegas.
Both President Bill Clinton and Governor / Reverend Mike Huckabee are from Hope, Arkansas, which may explain much.

Several years ago a friend and I spent the night in Hope, and had a sandwich at the local Dairy Queen. There was no squirrel on the electric menu, but I think the culinary workers were humming the theme from Deliverance.

I too have eaten the arboreal rodent; it was one of those experiences my Depression-raised father thought I ought to know about. Those of us raised in the security of plenty mock such a diet only from our ignorance, for mankind has always lived on the margins of starvation. We who motor along highways lined with cafes’ and grocery stores full of good, inexpensive food almost never think about the harsh reality that our ancestors almost always needed a little more protein for the pot.

And you never, ever joke about food with Depression babies. Once upon a time I pushed away a plate (not squirrel), and my father said "Eat your supper; there are children starving in China who would love to have those beans / peas / potatoes / corn."

Suffering from a pre-adolescent failure to think critically, I said "Well, they can have mine."

The sequel was not pretty, and to this day its memory makes me sit lightly.
A modern host might ask you of a meal "How did you like the presentation?"

A host raised in the 1950s may ask "Was it good?"

But your Mawmaw and Pawpaw will ask, in genuine concern, "Did you get enough to eat?"

The psychic pain of real hunger and fear of hunger runs deep.

As for me, I am a good hundred pounds away from ever again eating squirrel or broccoli.

And as for the candidates’ dietary choices, who gets eaten next – Alvin the Chipmunk?