Yesterday my daughter graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a Masters’ in Education. We celebrated with a bunch of meat over a fire.
This is goat meat from a goat our soon-to-be son-in-law (above) slaughtered in the primitive living skills class he teaches.
The last class had a large number of young children attending. Apparently they are unfazed by watching a goat they just nuzzled and petted scream and bleed out for ten minutes, where the adults tend to either be traumatized into sobbing wrecks or go the other direction and gush about how mystical and beautiful it is.
For my part, while I like the idea of exposing folks to the reality of meat processing, I also come from a family of hunters who restrict themselves to head shots so the animal doesn’t suffer.
The goat was damned tasty, though. And not tough at all. Hmm…
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I’m a big fan of cabrito.
I had goat a couple times in Taiwan. It’s pretty tasty.
Of course, I sampled a LOT of things in Taiwan. I think my favorite is still the barbequed squid.
I hope you are not telling me that the kids had to listen to it “scream and bleed out for ten minutes” because it took him that long to kill it? What did he do beat it to death with a small rock on the end of a string?
So, how did it taste? What was the marinade.
Goat? Not ba-a-a-a-a-d, at all!
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
People need to know that food doesn’t just come from the supermarket.
Ted, I believe the goat screamed at the initial incision and for perhaps a minute or two thereafter as it tried to escape, thrashed about, etc., then became more and more quiet as it weakened and “came to accept what was happening to it” and “embraced the experience.”
Obviously just a beautiful thing chock-full of meaning.
So, why didn’t he just shoot it in the head?
Waall, now that’s a topic in and of itself. It’s a primitive-living skills class, after all, and much of the techniques derive from Native American or Mexican Indian approaches, and the mindset seems to come along with that.
Most of these folks are primitive bowhunters. If it’s okay for an animal you shoot with an arrow to bleed out over several hours while you use your tracking skills to find it, expiring in ten minutes after being stuck with a knife is a “quick death.”
Although the goat probably didn’t feel much pain following the cut, I’ve got a bit more perspective on organ shutdown than most, having been through it myself. I can tell you that’s one of the worst feelings in the world and I would not wish it on anyone, man or beast. I’m definitely not looking forward to experiencing it again at the end of my life.
The other thing is that some of the children would probably be startled more by a .22 to the head. That’s a really loud noise in close quarters, especially to young ears.
I’m not too worried about the children; Mao’s dictum about the ideal army being comprised of 8-year-olds comes to mind; they may understand the mechanism of death, but they don’t really comprehend death itself, or of what’s being lost when it comes.