Making Possum jerky
While we’re on the subject of eating cute furry animals I may as well own up to another one of my weird, adventurous, and sickening food moments.
Unlike the Rambo-esque demise of my little squirrel friend, this possum met his possum maker on the roads of New Zealand, undoubtedly run over by the hoards of Uruk-hai marching from Saruman’s tower to slaughter Hobbits in the Shire. Surely it would have laid there, aging under the elements until it became a freeze-dried pile of fur like the dead dog we had in our front garden while I was growing up, but for some poor soul who took one look at its mangled flesh and said, “Damn that would make a good pie.”
Sometime later, the road kill possum pie was baked and subsequently divided into smaller, pie shaped morsels in the shack of what the Aussies would call “country bougan”. Enter a group of American tourists on a spring break tour of the south island taking a middle of nowhere stop on the way towards the glaciers of Mordor (the movie exaggerates all that lava bullshit) and you have a shitty made for TV horror movie.
All of man’s bad decisions have to do with a girl; Adam had Eve to tempt him with an apple and Leonardo DiCaprio had what’s-her-face on the Titanic. Besides the creation of man and 11 time academy award winning thing, mine wasn’t much different. It wasn’t long until some hot girl noticed the bite-sized possum pies on display for the equivalent of 25 American cents. The adventure of being in New Zealand quickly took over and, in a spur of the moment decision she snapped, “I’m going to eat one, who wants to do it with me?” All I heard was the second part of that statement, so my excitement was quickly replaced with disgust as I realized what I actually was going to get to “do”. Unfortunately for me, it was too late to pull out. Sexual innuendos aside I realized that passing on the road kill treat would make me look like a wuss and would severely impact the “little to no” reputation that I had worked so hard to build with my fellow Americans. Reluctantly I agreed, and down the hatch it went. I should have at least tried to pull the wedding cake move as a consolation prize. Fails all around.
Unlike squirrel, possum does not taste like chicken. As I recall, it tastes like premium canned catfood… not that 
I’ve tried premium canned cat food… ok who am I kidding that friskies commercial made it look like cat food would give me a better experience than mushrooms. It may have been the road kill bit, or possibly the quality of the pie crust, but that thing was chewy, bland, and not at all a good decision. Sadly enough for me, my attempts at culinary machismo were defeated upon reacting like a 5 year old girl who hates brussel sprouts but was force fed them through a funnel. To add to my shame, the hot chick simply said, “hmmm, gross” and walked away while I continued to throw a gagging fit of epic proportions.
Ironically enough, not one night later, my roommates and I were visited by a black possum while playing cards near the sliding glass door of our hotel. He lingered for a while, took a long, deep, pitiful look into my soul, and then sauntered off into the darkness.
The enemy has many spies.
