Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 153, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 June 1911 — HEDGEHOG FIT FOR EPICURE [ARTICLE]

HEDGEHOG FIT FOR EPICURE

Maine Advocates Bay Bounties Caused Great Waste of Good Food—Preferred to Skunk or Muskrat. Machias, Me. —“It is a shame,” says a lover of hedgehog meat, “that the people of Maine have remained in ignorance regarding the delights of eating roasted hedgehog for so long. If they had been utilized as food those 150,000 dead hedgehogs for which Maine has paid out $38,000 in bounties would have kept two regiments of soldiers in meat for six weeks. It was a cruel and wanton waste of precious food.” The advocates of hedgehog meat as part of the regular bill of fare assert that in England the average poacher prefers a hedgehog to a hare for breakfast. In Michigan the legislature has placed a perpetual close time on hedgehogs, so that persons lost in the woods and without food may find meat to satisfy their hunger and kill it without the aid of shotgun or rifle. It is asserted on good authority that more than 20 men are saved from starving in Michigan every »ear because hedgehogs are abundant and easy to capture. When a Maine Indian has his choice of a hedgehog, a skunk, a woodchuck and a muskrat for dinner, he will select the first named invariably, and take the skunk as second choice, leav-

Ing the woodchuck, which is the only one -of the lot a Maine white man will taste, to the last Unlike the skunk and the woodcblcjt, which are lean and unsavory except fcT a few months in the fall, of the muskrat, which is fat, and which has a strong flavor in spite of parboiling, the hedgehog is always in an edible condition, and has meat that is as tender and white as that of a spring chicken. The method of cooking a hedgehog is so simple that a novice can learn in one short lesson. When the epicure is permitted.to make choice he, should shun the .large; old males, which at times weigh 30 or 40 pounds. The preparation consists in removing the viscera, washing out the Interior and filling the cavity with slices of fat pork, peeled raw potatoes, sprigs of spearmint and wild celery from the brook. < f Then, Without removing the quills of skinning, the body is plastered thickly with wet clay, from the nearest bank. The muddy, bulky mass is thrust into live coals and covered with blazing fagots, to be roasted for two hours. On removal from the coals, the clay is found to hovel been baked into a hard and solid mass, which must be broken open with an ax or a heavy stone, whereupon the skin and quills of the animal cling to the clay wrap ping and fall away, leaving the clean, white meat ready to be eaten. Ten years ago the Maine legislature passed a law providing for a bounty of 25 cents a head on all dead hedgehogs brought to the town clerks. An appropriation of SSOO for each of the years 1901 and 1902 was made, but when the total for the two. bounty years reached $38,000, the legislature quickly repealed the law. -—■