Day 170, eating owls for fun and profit

Frowned on now we are supposedly a more civilised society but at one time in our history owl consumption was the natural way of things.  If you’ve just been transported back from the early 1900s then consumption in this instance is not related to coughing up lumps of blood but the consumption of flying creatures that themselves cough up lumps of fur, bone, and indigestibles. Assuming you are not of a nervous disposition then read on.

Here we have a standard owl.

 Standard owl retaining its ceremonial plinth

This one would have provided a light snack between meals for the well to do of the 15th century, for a peasant it would probably have been the main meal of the day, and if their luck was in it would have been washed down with a warm cup of goat urine. If the goat urine was not warmed to the correct temperature then death would have been likely to occur.

Roasted or baked in its feathers, they were a vital source of carbonised keratin, after being matured in horse dung for a week this the equivalent of silverside of beef today. The process of cooking destroyed parasitic hazard and the potential for enzymatic reactions which could potentially have caused death.

The bones would have been kept in the mouth until fully dissolved. Care would have been taken not to puncture the gums otherwise death would have been likely to occur.

Here we have a non-standard owl.

The bell didn't make them any easier to capture

The non-standard owl was a different proposition. Much more difficult to capture, much more difficult to cook. This was something that would have been out of reach of the everyday shit-shoveler and only those with royal connections could have obtained one. The danger of death, either by incorrect cooking or at the hand of the nobility, prevented the proletariat from attempting to eat these under anything but the most adverse circumstances - it would have been preferable to eat gravel.

It would take a much stronger drink than goat urine to assist in digestion of this type of night-bird.  Thought to have had the flavour of twelve month rotten porpoise liver, it was an acquired taste even six hundred years ago.  No modern human has attempted to try this culinary experience. The danger of death, even now with our advanced society, is an ever present danger in extreme eating like this.

We must be wary of imposing our own morality, ethics, and ideas of taste onto those that lived under very different conditions from ourselves. It was possible for life to end rather rapidly. Death could be triggered by things we wouldn't expect to bring about our demise today, a prick from a rose, a broken toe, removal of your head by sharp objects - all things that are very unlikely now given our understanding of hygiene, medicine and our rejection of primitive beliefs. The general acceptance that we were here for as long as we could avoid tripping over something, stubbing something, or being mildly grazed by something, lead to little by way of complaint about existence.

The pragmatism of those times is something we perhaps should pay heed to today.

There is no fun or profit to be had in eating owls. There is a significant likelihood of death.