Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio KA.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Ridiculous History. Thanks again as always for tuning in, folks.
Speaker 1: Shout out to our super producer, Casey the Crow Pegrams.
Speaker 1: Shout out to our guest producer Andrew the Raven Howard.
Speaker 1: Uh they called me Ben, I I didn't think of
Speaker 1: bird nicknames for the for us. That's that's as far
Speaker 1: as I got. You know, I'm triggered by bird nicknames. Ben,
Speaker 1: Thank you for for going giving me one. No, of course, Noll,
Speaker 1: of course. This is Uh. This is an interesting episode
Speaker 1: for both of us today because as you know, ride
Speaker 1: or die nol is. You know you're you're not a
Speaker 1: fan of birds for some I would say, some perfectly
Speaker 1: valid reasons. Well, I mean it depends, you know. I
Speaker 1: think it's possible that I have a manufactured, implanted memory
Speaker 1: of being dive bomb attacked by seagulls at the beach
Speaker 1: with my grandfather as a youth, But that may or
Speaker 1: may not have actually happened. It might just be one
Speaker 1: of the story I tell myself to explain my fear
Speaker 1: of birds. I was talking about this with my girl
Speaker 1: for the other night. I think I'm more afraid of
Speaker 1: like land walking birds that can really come at you,
Speaker 1: you know, with wobbly goose type necks, or like ostriches
Speaker 1: and stuff, or shoe bill yeah, exactly, or like an
Speaker 1: emu or god forbid, a castuary. You ever seen those monsters.
Speaker 1: They can apparently disembowl you with a single claw, like
Speaker 1: in the Jurassic Park the book. I didn't make it
Speaker 1: to the movie, but yeah, there's kind of like weird dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: And but I know that you're a fan of the corvids,
Speaker 1: and we've talked about this multiple times on this and
Speaker 1: other shows. Um, I think it's a dream of yours
Speaker 1: to one day command an army of corvitte that can
Speaker 1: do your bidding, but you would do stuff for them too,
Speaker 1: would be like a quid pro quote type arrangement. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm fascinated by the study of what is
Speaker 1: called non human intelligence, and corvids are brilliant. I just
Speaker 1: want to hang out with them. I want to have
Speaker 1: a Corvid crew, and I'd prefer ravens, but you know,
Speaker 1: I will accept crows. Uh. The at the most extreme version.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the television adaptation of True Blood. Uh. Spoilers,
Speaker 1: there's a weird subplot as this show declined in quality
Speaker 1: about a vampire who has kind of created this relationship
Speaker 1: with werewolves and it's a symbiotic relationship and maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it would be something like that with crows. But today's
Speaker 1: episode is about a guy named Dr. T. W. Stallings
Speaker 1: who completely fundamentally disagrees with my, uh, with my opinion
Speaker 1: of crows. No, this guy hated them. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: to be fair, Ben, You're not a farmer during the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, so crows are not really wreck in your
Speaker 1: shop the way they were, uh Dr T. W. Stallings
Speaker 1: and many other folks who were desperately in need of
Speaker 1: a bountiful harvest. Right. So, in the nineteen thirties, crows,
Speaker 1: as in Western civilization in general outside of of Ben
Speaker 1: for the most part, were viewed as disease vectors. You know,
Speaker 1: often have bad reputations in terms of superstition, like black cats. Um,
Speaker 1: sort of like this uh concept of the lore of
Speaker 1: the of the crow as being some sort of familiar
Speaker 1: to like the devil or like you know, witches or
Speaker 1: were warlocks or whatever. But most importantly, they were crop stealers.
Speaker 1: I think we all know about the scarecrow. That's a
Speaker 1: thing probably was successful in varying degrees. You think they
Speaker 1: would have gotten used to it them being so smart
Speaker 1: and all right, then yeah, that's the thing. Part of
Speaker 1: the reason that crows and ravens can be such pest
Speaker 1: is because they are intelligent enough to think ahead and
Speaker 1: to plan more efficient ways to steal things basically, And
Speaker 1: so yeah, you're you're absolutely right, dude, to a crow
Speaker 1: or raven. You know, any kind of corvid might be
Speaker 1: scared off by a human like figure or effigy in
Speaker 1: a field for a short amount of time, but once
Speaker 1: they realize, hey, this thing looks like a person but
Speaker 1: it doesn't move, then it's just another tree basically, then
Speaker 1: they're all about it totally. And I think the most
Speaker 1: recent appearance of corvid's in our podcast life was on
Speaker 1: a Strange News episode of Stuff That I Want You
Speaker 1: to Know, where we discussed a study that showed that
Speaker 1: corvids actually have something called meta cognition, which is something
Speaker 1: that humans have, which that's apart from their animals. Metic
Speaker 1: cognition is quite literally thinking about thinking. So to your point,
Speaker 1: then they can plan, they can observe, and they can
Speaker 1: change their behavior accordingly, which is not not something to
Speaker 1: sneeze at, you know, for a for a tiny what
Speaker 1: what some people might malign as like bird brains or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, that is not a thing with these guys,
Speaker 1: right right, And you know, honestly, they are exceptional in
Speaker 1: the avian field, but they've used their powers for trickery
Speaker 1: and to get over on humans. So it does make
Speaker 1: sense that Dr. T. W. Stallings and many other people
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma in the nineteen thirties, as he said, would
Speaker 1: not care for these birds. It's already a very difficult
Speaker 1: proposition to be a farmer, even if there is not
Speaker 1: a crushing economic depression under way. So our episode today
Speaker 1: concerns Dr. Stallings push throughout the state of Oklahoma to
Speaker 1: get more of his fellow Oklahoma residents to start hunting
Speaker 1: and eating crows. Yeah, and eventually Oklahoma's governor even got
Speaker 1: in on the mix. He founded something called the State
Speaker 1: House Crow Meat Lovers Association. And you know, Noel, you
Speaker 1: and I both love uh talking about food. We're both
Speaker 1: adventurous eaters. Um, we're gonna have to get to ah,
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to get through some of the problems
Speaker 1: with eating crow. I think I think we are. And
Speaker 1: I gotta say, the crow meat Lover's pizza sounds like
Speaker 1: the worst pizza ever of all time. Oh god, yeah,
Speaker 1: unless it's spoiled meat and it's a pizza just for crows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe with also like milk curds sprinkled on top or something. Um,
Speaker 1: you know. We gotta remember though, in addition to all
Speaker 1: this crow hate, you know, literally just wanting to kill
Speaker 1: them because they were screwing up people's crops. It was
Speaker 1: the Great Depression and meat was scarce, so any meat
Speaker 1: you could get would be considered like a premium kind
Speaker 1: of like that. Even like, you know, typically people were
Speaker 1: subsisting on things like you know, dry goods like beans
Speaker 1: and pasta and and uh, you know, hominy for example,
Speaker 1: like in the South, right, So meat would have been
Speaker 1: like a special treat kind of even crow meat. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna get again, We're gonna get into some of
Speaker 1: the ways this was prepared. But let's just backtrack to
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six, when the residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma began
Speaker 1: to kind of jump on board this crow eating bandwagon.
Speaker 1: The butcher's. Local butchers would send their kids out into
Speaker 1: the fields to kill and collect crow carcasses. They got
Speaker 1: a dollar fifty. First I was reading this and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, a dollar fifty a crow, that seems reasonable. No,
Speaker 1: it was a dollar fifty a dozen of crows, which
Speaker 1: is uh yeah. And they would bring them back, chopped
Speaker 1: their heads off, trust them up, and serve them, I imagine, however,
Speaker 1: but again we're gonn give me some recipes later. And
Speaker 1: this even became like remember how when like lobster was
Speaker 1: like trash food, and like, like servants even petitioned the
Speaker 1: government to force their masters not to serve them lobster
Speaker 1: more than three times a week or something like that.
Speaker 1: The crow was starting to occupy something of of a
Speaker 1: you know, space like that, and that it was going
Speaker 1: to be suggested as being like a staple food in
Speaker 1: hospitals and just kind of like again like just the
Speaker 1: go to meat of the era. Yeah. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: you can get a perspective on how these kids were
Speaker 1: incentivized to hunt crows in batches of a dozen at
Speaker 1: a time. Our inflation calculator tells us that one dollar
Speaker 1: nine is equivalent to just a little bit over nineteen
Speaker 1: dollars today, So there was some money for some kids there. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you're right. People were embracing this idea on multiple
Speaker 1: organizational levels. One science teacher in Oklahoma, Miss odd Firth,
Speaker 1: even established a class exclusively about how to cook crows.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a niche education right there. And uh
Speaker 1: Dr T. W. Stallings himself not a farmer, He was
Speaker 1: the county health superintendent, and like you said, he was
Speaker 1: a vociferous, self proclaimed crow hater. He said that crows
Speaker 1: were a serious problem for Oklahoma farmers, a problem that
Speaker 1: had only gotten worse in the years leading up to
Speaker 1: the mid nineties, and so he had this Bernese vibe
Speaker 1: about him. The said, where Bernet's vibe? He said, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get the hearts and minds of our fellow
Speaker 1: Oklahoma's focus on exterminating and eating crows so that we're
Speaker 1: not just killing them for no reason. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: do this, he said, in a lightbulb moment, through a
Speaker 1: series of what I will call crow banquets. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna trick people, We're gon because people love that, right,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna we're gonna invite all these folks over.
Speaker 1: We're gonna cook them a nice sumptuous meal, because it's
Speaker 1: hard to turn down a hot meal in the depression.
Speaker 1: And then after they've eaten their fill and they're talking
Speaker 1: about how how good this was, this meal was, we're
Speaker 1: going to tell them that they had, in fact dined
Speaker 1: on crows and he had a recipe for it too.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound half bad, to be honest. I mean,
Speaker 1: chrow meat is notorious for being dry and stringy. I've
Speaker 1: heard it described as tasting kind of livery. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, I like liver. I like liver and onions.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't eat like liver prepared many other ways, but
Speaker 1: if it's like fried and like you know, rolled in
Speaker 1: a nice gravy, it can it can be pretty palatable
Speaker 1: with you know, mushrooms and onion or something like that.
Speaker 1: But they were doing something very similar with this. They
Speaker 1: were coating, you know, plucking them, obviously coating them with lard,
Speaker 1: which would you know, help keep them oyster, and then
Speaker 1: cooking them in a sealed cast iron pan, likely kind
Speaker 1: of a slow heat um so that it would kind
Speaker 1: of stay as tender as possible, and you know, seasoned
Speaker 1: and added celery and likely carrots and maybe some other
Speaker 1: things like you might do with, you know, a roasted
Speaker 1: chicken perhaps um, and then of course finishing all with
Speaker 1: lots of gravy. Three crows to a person does a
Speaker 1: meal make? And Stallings really was into this. He had
Speaker 1: his reasons in terms of just like thinking about it
Speaker 1: in terms of public health, I suppose, which is kind
Speaker 1: of weird considering that you know, these crows were considered
Speaker 1: diseased and vectors for disease and he was the head
Speaker 1: of the health department. He was a big proponent for
Speaker 1: people eating these. I wonder how they tested them to
Speaker 1: make sure they weren't like contaminated or something that. Well,
Speaker 1: that's another that's he's kind of if if crows in
Speaker 1: Oklahoma in the nineties are smurfs, then this guy's Stallings
Speaker 1: is definitely their artmel right. It's it's weird. They got
Speaker 1: pressed for this too. In the nineteen thirties, The Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: Post Gazette reported this enthusiasm for consuming crow in In
Speaker 1: ninety six, Atlanta Constitution, which now exists as the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Journal Constitution, reported how the then governor E. W. Marlin
Speaker 1: and a group of state officials went to one of
Speaker 1: these crow banquets and Marlin was so impressed. The story
Speaker 1: goes that that caused him to establish this state house
Speaker 1: Crow meat Lovers Association. And you know, crows are omnivorous
Speaker 1: right in many ways their vacuum cleaners. If you end
Speaker 1: up feeding a crow, all always be cautious about feeding
Speaker 1: wild animals. Usually not a great idea. But if you
Speaker 1: end up feeding and crow, the main thing you have
Speaker 1: to look out for is not feeding them stuff that
Speaker 1: has a lot of as salt. But if you end
Speaker 1: up eating a crow, you're right, no, they they've got
Speaker 1: a gamey taste. They can get grainy and stringy and tough,
Speaker 1: but they're they're dark meat. So if you prepare them
Speaker 1: correctly from what I understand, I haven't done this, they
Speaker 1: can end up tasting a little bit like duck or goose,
Speaker 1: which can be you know, pretty delectable. Uh huh. I
Speaker 1: don't think I ever had a goose, but I can't.
Speaker 1: I always think of that seat in the office where
Speaker 1: it's a Christmas episode and Dwight finds a goose that's
Speaker 1: been hit on the side of the road and brings
Speaker 1: it into the office, you know, and he's supposedly gonna
Speaker 1: trust it up and you know, clean it right there
Speaker 1: and cook it for so he's like as a Christmas miracle,
Speaker 1: and of course they make him take it outside. But duck,
Speaker 1: I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it
Speaker 1: is the darker of the dark meat. Like if if
Speaker 1: you think dark meat, chicken taste gamy, duck is probably
Speaker 1: gonna be extra that thing. But it's also fatty, which
Speaker 1: bothers some people. But if you're into cooking, one thing
Speaker 1: you can do with duck is cook it on our
Speaker 1: rack and then under a rack, slice up some potatoes
Speaker 1: and put them underneath the duck so the drippings dripped
Speaker 1: down onto the potatoes. Then you get like duck fat
Speaker 1: fried potatoes, which has a real rich flavor to it. Um.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, there were a lot of sacrifices that
Speaker 1: had to be made in the Great Depression, like instead
Speaker 1: of butter, they use drippings or fat. So probably having
Speaker 1: fatty you know, dark meat was probably a good thing
Speaker 1: because it made for more drippings they could then use
Speaker 1: in place of butter. Right, yeah, yeah, there's a great
Speaker 1: book that details this called Paradox of Plenty of Social
Speaker 1: History of Eating in Modern America. This is the kind
Speaker 1: of specific reference work that I love, just like the
Speaker 1: Kolanski's book about salt oh Ben. I had to bring
Speaker 1: up to some friends the other day. Uh, your fascination
Speaker 1: with very specific books. And if I'm not mistaken, you
Speaker 1: said you own a book exclusively on halibut cod God. Okay,
Speaker 1: my bad, I thought, because halibit came up and I
Speaker 1: was like, pretty sure my partner has a book exclusively
Speaker 1: on haliban. It's uh, yeah, it's it's uh. I would,
Speaker 1: by the way, I would totally buy and devour a
Speaker 1: book about haliban, just for the Haliban, just for the Haliban.
Speaker 1: So in this book by Harvey Levinstein, he talks about
Speaker 1: the privation people face because, for a long long time,
Speaker 1: and still to a degree here in the States, eating
Speaker 1: is a social opportunity. It's when you see your friends,
Speaker 1: it's when you spend quality time with your family. And
Speaker 1: it was tough for people to adjust to having to
Speaker 1: change this pattern. During the depression. Instead of three meals
Speaker 1: a day, might have to like you said, no, people
Speaker 1: went back to very affordable grains and carved staples, right
Speaker 1: corn meal, pasta, beans, pancakes. The most common complaint people
Speaker 1: had at this time was that they were they were
Speaker 1: getting tired of eating, of eating the same stuff day
Speaker 1: in day out. Meats, fruits, a lot of other delicate
Speaker 1: sees like sweets pretty much disappeared due to either scarcity
Speaker 1: or affordability at this point, Like there were riots in
Speaker 1: small towns across the country where people were literally shouting,
Speaker 1: we want food. We will not let our children starve. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least they weren't shouting, we want more variety, we
Speaker 1: will not eat beans again, because that would be a
Speaker 1: little I mean, at least they had something. No, it's true.
Speaker 1: And the people that had the beans and the pasta,
Speaker 1: and if they were lucky eggs, which really did take
Speaker 1: the places of meat, you know, because meats were just
Speaker 1: so hard to come by, they kind of had it good,
Speaker 1: you know. But it was it was pretty widespread, and
Speaker 1: of course they were you know, the swells in their
Speaker 1: ivory towers that probably had more than the rest of us.
Speaker 1: But yeah, in general, people were having to really subsist
Speaker 1: and then kind of scraped to get by. Not to
Speaker 1: mention that that's the that's the big thing about the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, right it was. It was the perfect storm
Speaker 1: of horrible, horrible things happening. One of which was uh,
Speaker 1: it would have exacerbated the issue of the crows, you know,
Speaker 1: attacking the crops. It was drought that already dried up
Speaker 1: crops all over the South. Share croppers in Alabama they
Speaker 1: referred to their diet as the three M diet, which
Speaker 1: was salt, pork, was the M, meat, corn meal, and molasses.
Speaker 1: Why the molasses. That dessert was that like the pudding
Speaker 1: cup of the Great Depression. So there are things called breadlines.
Speaker 1: I believe it's very similar to a soup kitchen ben
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken. Like a breadline is like a
Speaker 1: free handouts for for people in desperate situations or who
Speaker 1: are homeless. Yeah, it's for people who found themselves houseless
Speaker 1: or they were unable to find work. That was the majority.
Speaker 1: The majority of people were unemployed and fighting to stay
Speaker 1: in their homes or in their towns or with their relatives.
Speaker 1: And so you would wait in the in these long
Speaker 1: literal lines to get some sort of sustenance and it
Speaker 1: would be usually some kind of bread, especially in the
Speaker 1: North and and and like a lot of gangsters and
Speaker 1: criminals like Paublo Escobar for example, made a name for
Speaker 1: himself by giving food and clothes and things to less
Speaker 1: fortunate people who lived around the area of Medine where
Speaker 1: he did business. Al Capone ran a breadline, you know,
Speaker 1: to kind of I think probably engender some positive feelings
Speaker 1: among the people that he, like you know, was around
Speaker 1: in his in his actual neighborhoods. Yeah, like the Yakuza
Speaker 1: helping disaster stricken areas of Japan after earthquakes or other
Speaker 1: natural disasters. Do you know they've also been involved in
Speaker 1: organizing Halloween things. I jumped out, it's so weirdly adhering,
Speaker 1: But maybe a story for another You know, it's interesting
Speaker 1: because I have some roots in Appalachia and I can
Speaker 1: confirm from accounts of ancestors some of the horror story.
Speaker 1: But what occurred for those folks in in that time,
Speaker 1: Like one strategy was that children would eat on alternate days.
Speaker 1: I had a relative who would tell my parents about
Speaker 1: times where they were convinced that they were going to starve,
Speaker 1: only to have dug up an old frozen patch of
Speaker 1: potatoes and eaten those potatoes that were frozen in the ground,
Speaker 1: which gave them just enough sustenance to soldier on. But
Speaker 1: you know, urban areas, rural areas alike, they were all
Speaker 1: crushed by this. Ninety thousand businesses completely shut their doors,
Speaker 1: fifty million people lose their jobs, get their wages cut
Speaker 1: in half. If you read The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck,
Speaker 1: he's so exaggerating. Now, it's so good, and it's one
Speaker 1: of the first books that I was like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is a painting a picture, this is how it really was.
Speaker 1: It just feels like you're there and yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: spoiler alert, no, I'm not gonna do but at the
Speaker 1: end there's something that's absolutely heartbreaking that a character has
Speaker 1: to do to survive. Yeah. Yeah, that is a harrowing book.
Speaker 1: And it's based on this period of time in a
Speaker 1: realistic way. Twenty people that we know of committed suicide,
Speaker 1: which means certainly more ten thousand banks collapsed. The effects
Speaker 1: of the Great Depression remain in the modern day and
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. And that's that's the context
Speaker 1: in which this idea of eating crow occurs. Like people
Speaker 1: are going especially rural areas, people are saying, look, if
Speaker 1: I don't have two nickels to rub together to go
Speaker 1: to a deli, well then I'll just do what my
Speaker 1: grandparents are great grandparents did and I'll just hunt game,
Speaker 1: you know, the way like people in rural areas will
Speaker 1: still hunt game for a reliable source of nutrition today. Absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: and pro became an alternative, viable routine. There was not
Speaker 1: one person in this area of Oklahoma said yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: too good for it. Yeah, and it was you know,
Speaker 1: it was it was a kind of two pronged thing
Speaker 1: right where it was giving them some variation in their
Speaker 1: diets or perhaps the only thing they had. You know,
Speaker 1: that certainly could have been the case for many, But
Speaker 1: it also was helping out the farmers and potentially staving
Speaker 1: off that further loss of of of productivity to to
Speaker 1: their to their crops. So you know, it seemed like
Speaker 1: kind of helping out your neighbor in addition to like
Speaker 1: getting a meal in you. But this was not just
Speaker 1: an Oklahoma thing, by the way. It started to really spread,
Speaker 1: Like you saw reports out of Kansas, Georgia, Washington State,
Speaker 1: Illinois reporting this kind of surge in public interest in
Speaker 1: eating these birds. In August of n approximately two Americans
Speaker 1: per day wrote to the Department of Agriculture asking for
Speaker 1: details on quote, how crows might be cooked, stewed, fried,
Speaker 1: or roasted, and how crow broth can be made. Probably,
Speaker 1: do you think that's the that's the question for the
Speaker 1: Department of agg seems more like a good housekeeping kind
Speaker 1: of letter, you know, or like an Emily Post situation. Well,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a different time. You know, people
Speaker 1: in general wrote letters were offted. But but I I
Speaker 1: believe you are correct. They eventually probably had to put
Speaker 1: an intern on that. The fact that crews were plentiful
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma and many other parts of the country was
Speaker 1: helpful to stallings cause crow hunting clubs started popping up
Speaker 1: and there was sort of a a war maybe campaign
Speaker 1: is a better word for public favor to this approach
Speaker 1: of eating crew because in addition to having all these
Speaker 1: heavy dark folkloric associations or connotations, crews are scavengers, and
Speaker 1: so they were known to eat garbage, and so people thought, look,
Speaker 1: if I'm eating a crow, am I kind of just
Speaker 1: eating garbage with an extra step? Is that just like
Speaker 1: eating trash with extra steps? And uh? Yes and no? Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, well, catfish is good now, it's very true,
Speaker 1: and so so I yeah, but I would also say
Speaker 1: yes and no in that they're not clean, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like you really have to. But I
Speaker 1: guess you would boil them, probably to get the feathers
Speaker 1: to pop off, and then pluck them like you do.
Speaker 1: So I suppose they're being like sanitized, but still just
Speaker 1: the whole concept just really gives me the creeps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, to be clear, I said, there was
Speaker 1: no one in it Oklahoma at the time who automatically
Speaker 1: said they were too good for it. But this was
Speaker 1: not everybody's favorite new food, and there were a couple
Speaker 1: of people outside of Oklahoma who are just like, forget this,
Speaker 1: We'll we'll get to them. Uh. But opinions vary on
Speaker 1: how this tasted for a lot of people as a
Speaker 1: curiosity or a kind of a desperate measure, or was
Speaker 1: a novelty. And like we said, they are gamy, they
Speaker 1: are dark meat. So a lot of the recipes that
Speaker 1: you see are similar to recipes that you can see
Speaker 1: for other gamey, tasty meat. You have as much like
Speaker 1: seasoning as possible in the mix to make it make
Speaker 1: it go down a little bit smoother. Sure, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, like I love cooking with chicken thighs, but
Speaker 1: it's gotta be really really well seasoned. Whereas a chicken breast.
Speaker 1: You know, you could probably eat it, which is a
Speaker 1: little salt and pepper and it tastes pretty good. And
Speaker 1: then to me, the chicken thigh is the perfect level
Speaker 1: of gamey. I love this too, by the way, But
Speaker 1: I don't think we mentioned some folks. They were really
Speaker 1: trying to up the idea of the crow. So there
Speaker 1: were even people that referred to them as black partridges. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's just just kind of like, you know, a crow
Speaker 1: by any other name still tastes like crow. But there
Speaker 1: was this chef at the hotel Sherman named from non
Speaker 1: potrais pant that makes sense, punt Trough who it was,
Speaker 1: is a very fancy hotel, and he had a dish
Speaker 1: called crow on casserole. Uh. And if if I may,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna read a little bit of the recipe.
Speaker 1: It sounds this sounds great. Actually, this recipe is specific
Speaker 1: enough to cook it, I think. So he skinned and
Speaker 1: dress like we said, put in a pan with butter,
Speaker 1: add garlic, then a third cup of white wine, which
Speaker 1: most people wouldn't have. They would not That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: This is like total shabby chic kind of situation, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: Strong veal gravy, which is already going to have a
Speaker 1: little bit of a livery kind of game equality to it. Right,
Speaker 1: Three tablespoons and then soybeans sauce. Does that mean soy sauce? Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I think that's what that means, poured over the crow meat.
Speaker 1: And then the birds are cooked in a covered dish
Speaker 1: for two hours. Again that low and slow. It's got
Speaker 1: to be young birds. Take this goes to quote directly
Speaker 1: from the recipe. Young birds taken in the spring required
Speaker 1: just one hour, Chef punt Row said. And then of
Speaker 1: course mushrooms, small cubes of fried salt pork, and small
Speaker 1: glazed onions. Sounds pretty good. And people who tried this
Speaker 1: fancy like elevated cuisine approach overwhelmingly liked it. People had said,
Speaker 1: you know this surprisingly and I like it a little
Speaker 1: bit better than wild duck. And it's tasty and it's
Speaker 1: deliciously prepared. But as we said, some people, not in
Speaker 1: Oklahoma but other places felt like they were already too
Speaker 1: good for this, and they looked down their nose at it.
Speaker 1: There was one chef in Atlanta ninety six who said,
Speaker 1: roast crow bab b a h. People used to say
Speaker 1: that bah bah, Yeah, where's the humbug? Folks just don't
Speaker 1: go in for that kind of meat. So far as
Speaker 1: I'm concerned, to eat and crow will continue to be
Speaker 1: nothing but a political expression. It's interesting, that's a really
Speaker 1: no no. I think we I think we've been sort
Speaker 1: of alluding to this, uh, and that it was almost
Speaker 1: like a patriotic act to kill the crows at least
Speaker 1: because you were kind of helping your your neighbor, your
Speaker 1: farming neighbors. But also it was kind of an act
Speaker 1: of what's the word I'm looking for, like societal kind
Speaker 1: of like it was sort of like an act of
Speaker 1: bringing everyone together behind like a common enemy, right in
Speaker 1: a time where people felt desperately out of control. There's
Speaker 1: an account from um The Oklahoman from a woman named
Speaker 1: Sue Simpson who cooked this meat for a husband, talking
Speaker 1: about quote, feeling that it might be the patriotic thing
Speaker 1: to do. I bought some and baked crow for dinner.
Speaker 1: As I recall, there was not enough meat on the
Speaker 1: bones to make it worthwhile. I do not remember how
Speaker 1: it tasted, but I do know that I did try
Speaker 1: to eat it. My husband said that he did not
Speaker 1: mind eating crow. As in quotes. If he had done
Speaker 1: something to apologize for but did not expect to see it,
Speaker 1: served to dinner, and to please not do it again
Speaker 1: right Like you know, it takes a lot to make
Speaker 1: him marriage work. It was on his fee is in queues.
Speaker 1: It's true. This was a trend that came about of desperation.
Speaker 1: It had this patina of patriotism, and it was meant
Speaker 1: as a way of combating loss of crops. But after
Speaker 1: times became less desperate, this trend fizzled. There was one
Speaker 1: person who didn't give up on it, and you can
Speaker 1: guess who he is. Fellow ridiculous historians. Dr T. W.
Speaker 1: Stalls himself. He was full gargamel, as they say in Gattica.
Speaker 1: He saved nothing for the swim back. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: as late as ninety seven he was finding every reporter
Speaker 1: that would listen to him and extolling the virtues of
Speaker 1: eating crows. I wonder if he had a situation where
Speaker 1: he got like attacked by one or something as a kid.
Speaker 1: And that's where we are today. If you go to
Speaker 1: almost any restaurant in the US, it will be virtually
Speaker 1: impossible to find a genuine like dish made of crow
Speaker 1: it's even less common than turtle soup, which we talked
Speaker 1: about in the past, which is, you know, mainly common
Speaker 1: in New Orleans, Maryland and parts of DC. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you'll, you know, you'll you'll go to some
Speaker 1: fancy restaurants, so you'll see things like squab or other
Speaker 1: like gamy weird small birds on the menu as kind
Speaker 1: of a flex like, look look at how amazing our
Speaker 1: cooking is that we can make this weird trash bird
Speaker 1: tastes good. But I don't even know if like you know,
Speaker 1: Heston Blumenthal would try messing with crow. Maybe our friend
Speaker 1: Richard Blaze, maybe he might take a shot at it.
Speaker 1: But but the but most you're right, most folks won't.
Speaker 1: This has become kind of a closed chapter in the
Speaker 1: history book. But it leaves us with another conversation that
Speaker 1: we've talked about a little bit in the past. There
Speaker 1: are so many somewhat arbitrary cultural taboos about what is
Speaker 1: or is not fit to eat here in the u US,
Speaker 1: in the West overall. And if there hadn't been the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, crows would have been five people wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been trying to eat them. And what is now referred
Speaker 1: to as kind of the crow craze raises questions about
Speaker 1: what makes us consider something edible or something disgusting, and
Speaker 1: how culturally changeable or fluid these things might be like that,
Speaker 1: like nutria is another example, or raccoons or I think
Speaker 1: everybody's fine with eating alligators now right. It does seem
Speaker 1: that way, But there's even a broader conversation than that.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about this too. It's like the whole
Speaker 1: socially acceptable lime for like, it's okay to eat rabbit
Speaker 1: to some, but definitely not okay to eat cat. You know,
Speaker 1: at least in the United States. Crow just seems like
Speaker 1: it's nasty and probably not necessary and and really just
Speaker 1: probably limited to an active desperation. There's a really gross
Speaker 1: scene and always sunny in Philadelphia. You might remember it
Speaker 1: and fight like a crow, Fight like a crow. But
Speaker 1: he eats a crow and it's like tainted or something,
Speaker 1: and he starts like getting violently ill Frank's character. You're Frank,
Speaker 1: the Danny de Vito's character, and I think he almost
Speaker 1: starts like hallucinating off of the rotten crow or the
Speaker 1: tainted crow or something like that. But yeah, it definitely
Speaker 1: does not seem like. I mean, I think even animals
Speaker 1: would probably steer away from it if they could. It's
Speaker 1: funny because the whole time we're researching this episode, I
Speaker 1: just kept rewatching clips of the Fight Milk episode of
Speaker 1: Always Stunny in Philadelphia with like crow eggs and some
Speaker 1: kind of nutritional substance in a ton of like vodka.
Speaker 1: I think it was disgusting. But what is that show
Speaker 1: not given us? It hasn't given us something that we're
Speaker 1: going to give you now, folks, this had to be
Speaker 1: occurring to a lot of our fellow listeners today. Is
Speaker 1: this the origin of the old saying to eat crow? Luckily,
Speaker 1: according to our good friend Man Guess had a coutur,
Speaker 1: co founder of Mental Floss and a guy who actually
Speaker 1: hangs out with us, it's not true. It's also the
Speaker 1: perfect time to wish him the absolute best in his
Speaker 1: new venture. You were very sad to lose him at
Speaker 1: the company as a colleague, but we will remain dear friends.
Speaker 1: Been been with him for a long time and he's
Speaker 1: a lovely guy. But yeah, he wrote this article himself
Speaker 1: back when he was still a Mental Floss and he
Speaker 1: traced the origin of the expression to eat crow somewhere
Speaker 1: completely different. Yeah. Yeah, so when when you say to
Speaker 1: eat crow, it kind of has this feeling of like
Speaker 1: other expressions like oh he had egg on his face
Speaker 1: or uh, oh they had to eat humble pie. De
Speaker 1: crow means to humiliate onesell and there's a legend about
Speaker 1: it that dates back to eighteen twelve. During a truce
Speaker 1: in the War of eighteen twelve, Apparently a guy from
Speaker 1: New England walked over to the British camp to do
Speaker 1: some hunting and he got irritated because he's like, uh,
Speaker 1: we're in the middle of a war. I can't find
Speaker 1: any deer or rabbit or what have you. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna shoot the first thing I see. And the first
Speaker 1: thing he saw was a crew and he shot it.
Speaker 1: But a British guy, a British officer heard the gunshot right, Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right, And the British officer gave the American props
Speaker 1: on his marksmanship and then asked him to see the weapon,
Speaker 1: to hold the weapon um with which he had he
Speaker 1: had made this crack shot and uh being a bit
Speaker 1: on the gullible side. Um. The American handed over the weapon,
Speaker 1: after which, of course the British officer turned it on
Speaker 1: him and yelled at him and basically humiliated him and
Speaker 1: forced him to eat a bite of the crow that
Speaker 1: he had just killed, uncooked feathers and all yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the guy tried to beg but you know what
Speaker 1: could he do? The British dude had his guns, so
Speaker 1: he ate a piece of the crow. The officer returned
Speaker 1: his firearms, said okay, go home, get out of here,
Speaker 1: away with you. Uh. And before the British guy could leave,
Speaker 1: the new Englander was very angry, turned the gun on
Speaker 1: the officer and made him eat the rest of the
Speaker 1: burt also uncooked, also unplucked. Uh. The story concludes that
Speaker 1: the British officer was furious. The next day he went
Speaker 1: to the American camp and he demanded retribution and satisfaction.
Speaker 1: The US commanding officers had the soldier brought to him
Speaker 1: and they said, you know, have you seen this guy before,
Speaker 1: this British dude. And the soldier was trying to lie
Speaker 1: pro very cape, but he couldn't, so eventually he stuttered, yes, Captain,
Speaker 1: I dined with him yesterday. And that's that's the joke.
Speaker 1: They have heard other versions of this as a joke.
Speaker 1: I heard one. It was pretty popular in the military
Speaker 1: about this occurring in um, the Sahara or the Middle East,
Speaker 1: but it was a much filthier version because it was
Speaker 1: like the military version, it wasn't crow they were eating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I love this account. This is a
Speaker 1: great story. I still have to wonder if if it's
Speaker 1: not a little in dispute as to whether it came
Speaker 1: from this or the idea of like eating crow as
Speaker 1: being sort of like the worst case scenario, you know,
Speaker 1: like as we use it in terms of like having
Speaker 1: to eat our words and we've said something stupid. So
Speaker 1: I don't know this this does this does hold up?
Speaker 1: Like basically the bridge should not have given that gunback.
Speaker 1: What do you think was gonna happen? Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1: That's a behavior that makes me think it is legend.
Speaker 1: We know that. Uh. The exact origin, the real origin
Speaker 1: of the idiom is largely unknown today, but if first
Speaker 1: probably went in print somewhere in the eighteen fifties, and
Speaker 1: it was also a story about a dim witted American dude.
Speaker 1: So we have to eat our crow in that regard.
Speaker 1: But nol, what an episode. I um, you know, I
Speaker 1: feel bad for the crows at that time, but they
Speaker 1: were being they were a threat to the lives of
Speaker 1: these farmers, not just their livelihoods. And also, as we
Speaker 1: talked about with our pal Andrew the Raven Howard just
Speaker 1: before recording, there is this slippery slope people get into
Speaker 1: when they say you shouldn't dine on intelligent animals, right,
Speaker 1: because cows are intelligent, pigs are intelligent. Crows certainly are.
Speaker 1: Crows certainly are Unfortunately for them, they're probably the least
Speaker 1: delicious of the intelligent animals. Uh doubt people are gonna
Speaker 1: stop eating cow and pig anytime soon. Um. Cephalopod is
Speaker 1: another thing I don't I just I haven't finished it,
Speaker 1: but I started watching that documentary My Octopus Teacher. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so good. It's beautifully shot. It's a wonderful story
Speaker 1: about this guy that just like you know, basically becomes
Speaker 1: a sea creature. For lack of a better way of
Speaker 1: describing it. Um, But when you see the playfulness of
Speaker 1: these creatures and then how they can connect with this guy,
Speaker 1: you'd probably be hard pressed to slice up mo tentacle
Speaker 1: and dipping in soy sauce again. Yeah, yeah, which might
Speaker 1: be which might be a story for another day. But
Speaker 1: as he said, octopus also is delicious. UM as a
Speaker 1: huge fan of UH. The intelligence of the octopus, I've
Speaker 1: I've tried to remove them from my diet, which you
Speaker 1: know is luckily for people like us living so far inland,
Speaker 1: it's not too difficult for us to remove octopus from UH.
Speaker 1: It would be a lot tougher to remove like chicken wings.
Speaker 1: Because this is Atlanta, they're everywhere, all right. I don't
Speaker 1: know about you know, I am getting a little bit hungry,
Speaker 1: not quite famished. I think we fly like a crow
Speaker 1: into our next episode. But how about this, folks, what's
Speaker 1: the weirdest thing that you have eaten? What's the one
Speaker 1: thing if you have one that you've always wanted to try?
Speaker 1: And then, perhaps most directly, would you eat a crow? Why?
Speaker 1: Or why not? Oh? Don't let other crow see you
Speaker 1: eating a crow. They are intelligent enough to know what
Speaker 1: is happening. They are also smart enough to remember your
Speaker 1: face and teach their friends what you look like. They
Speaker 1: will mess you up and come for you. They will
Speaker 1: come for you. There's a study that proves it. They're
Speaker 1: actually a couple of studies and anecdotes that prove it,
Speaker 1: but thanks as always to our super producer Casey Pegram,
Speaker 1: to our guest producer Andrew Howard, and you know what
Speaker 1: always thinking I was in conversation about this earlier. We
Speaker 1: need to give a much deserved shout out to our
Speaker 1: graphic designer, Pam Peacock, who made our logo for the
Speaker 1: show that respued and logo that's all. It is all Pam,
Speaker 1: And we've got some surprises coming in the very near
Speaker 1: future which involved Pam. Uh. I'm gonna leave it at that.
Speaker 1: That's true. It's a you know, we're two guys who
Speaker 1: are literally paid to read about weird stuff and then
Speaker 1: talk for a living. So it is. It's been somewhat
Speaker 1: difficult for us to keep some of these secrets. But
Speaker 1: I think we're doing an okay job so far. I know,
Speaker 1: but don't you love that? And when I say love,
Speaker 1: I obviously mean hey when people on the internet are like, guys,
Speaker 1: got some big stuff coming, can't talk about it yet,
Speaker 1: but trust me, it's gonna pop off. Okay, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be awesome. We didn't quite do it that egregiously, but
Speaker 1: you know it what it is. But seriously, stay tuned.
Speaker 1: Big stuff on the Horizon in the meantime, Huge thanks
Speaker 1: to super producer Casey Pegrom to guest producer Andrew A.
Speaker 1: How the Crow, the Raven, the Blackbird, Raven McKnight, Howard
Speaker 1: the Third? Is he a third? He's baby? He might
Speaker 1: as well be? And are I hope you're not alluding
Speaker 1: to my tweet where I said I had a difficult
Speaker 1: time with an episode of stuff. They don't want you
Speaker 1: to know that I couldn't talk about It's okay, okay,
Speaker 1: well yes, uh oh gosh, yeah that was a real
Speaker 1: how was a real weird one that we just did
Speaker 1: earlier this week? But yes, thanks of course to Alex
Speaker 1: the Ephemist, Williams like e femorist like uh and big
Speaker 1: thanks to Eve's Jeff Coat, big big thanks to Christopher
Speaker 1: hassy Otis, both of whom shall be returning soon. And
Speaker 1: let's have a big old coca for our number one raven,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, a k. The Quister. I don't want him
Speaker 1: to be a raven. I like ravens too much. Let's
Speaker 1: make him well. Crows are cool too, Magpie. What kind
Speaker 1: of bird would he be if he was a bird?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know. For birds, Ben, you're
Speaker 1: asking the wrong guy. Any any any bird that I
Speaker 1: associated him in my mind would be an insult. So
Speaker 1: about a cocket deal. I like a cockat deal. They've
Speaker 1: got they've got a cool little plume, you know, on
Speaker 1: their head dress. I could see that. I could see that,
Speaker 1: and that feels like a compliment. For some reason, A
Speaker 1: cocket deal does get his vibe. What are we talking about?
Speaker 1: Tune into an upcoming episode of Ridiculous History to hear
Speaker 1: for yourself. M hmm. We'll see you next time, Fox Yeah.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.