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The Campfire Cook's Who's Zoo

STANLEY WEBSTER AND three other kids invited one of our mothers to a camp meal back in Ohio and for a lovely surprise fed her crawdaddies they'd caught in the slough and boiled in an old tomato can. Mother ate nearly all the little red things, choked her thanks and got away as soon as she could to wash out the horrible taste at home, not knowing that these same boiled crawfish are a luxury down in New Orleans. The same kids killed a snake, cooked it and said it was an eel, and everybody ate thereof and said it was swell.

The same goes for that skunk which Cora ate accidentally in the dark out of a Michigan icebox in the early days when it was cooked and tried out for its medicinal oil. She said it tasted like chicken.

Even a hell-diver, when stewed with straw becomes palatable, so be a sport and try anything once. During wars the people of Paris kill and eat everything in their Zoos to save feeding the pets and when we were in Berlin just after the last war we had wild boar and venison from the Kaiser's private park every day, in every way.

Here is a Swiss Family Robinson menu catering to every member of the clan just in case you get stuck on a desert isle-it runs from Alligator to Zebu which you'll get freshly cut off the carcass and roasted over any campfire in Brazil under the name of churrasco or dried in the sun like Texas dried beef and called xarqui, pronounced sharkey. Alligator: Like the tail of the herring, alligator tail is the best part. Cutlets are breaded and fried in butter like veal chops. The brains make a tidbit as epicurean as those of birds, but a good deal bigger; indeed, the alligator brain has to be cut in slices before poaching it just like a delicate ray fish, or sautéeing it and eating with browned butter sauce and lemon juice. Alligator eggs are very salty like turtle eggs. They're soft-boiled, scrambled and made into omelets aux fines herbes.

Amazon Indians get their meals by outsmarting alligators. They grip a sharp knife between their teeth, don a straw hat with a yard wide brim and walk slowly into the water toward Senhor Jacaré who is floating out in midstream eyeing his own prospective dinner. When the Indian walks out over his depth he dives quickly and swims under water while his hat keeps floating on the surface to fool Mr. Alligator. So, before the alligator knows it his belly is ripped open by the Indian's knife and he's being towed ashore like a dead log.

The Seminoles who still live in Florida swamps are almost as expert in killing 'gators and in cooking them. They do as tasty a job as they turn out with barbecuing rattlesnakes to excite the tourists during their Green Corn dance when they pass around their soupy saft. Always pick out a tender young alligator, no bigger than a 12 year old boy. Skin the tail, cut between the vertebrae, marinate 1/2 hour in Mexican Marinade. Then dry, broil 5-6 minutes on each side and serve with much melted butter and some lemon wedges.

Angleworms: this sur-realist shocker is French in origin, as one might imagine. The earthworms are dredged and fattened on milk for a week, then roasted or stewed, like Mexican worms of maguey.

Ant-eaters: Roasted antas are a great delicacy in Brazil, and so are ants. Since both four-legged ant-eaters and twolegged Brazilians eat ants, the matter gets as complicated as "eels eats alligator, alligators eats raw potatoes." A large section of every Brazilian cook book is devoted to preparing boa constrictors, wild cats, insects and Amazonian beasts dating back to the Paleozoic period. Ants: in Brazil the juicy abdomens of big sauva ants, half an inch long, are fried in fat even deeper than their own and greedily snacked. But that's nothing! African tribes enjoy looping the loop in a gourd full of ant soup. With our own eyes we have seen American explorers and anthropologists biting ant after ant to determine by the bitter acid taste whether or not the specimens were real ants. True ants taste sour, as lemon juice. In the Congo a pleasant limeade is made of these little animal lemons.

The Shoshone Indians out where the West begins to end, still go for locally celebrated white ants with big bellies which they roast; and we have a hunch we'd like to sit around a campfire popping them with the boys. But until such a lucky happenstance we're not going to experiment with any of those common little picnic ones or those annoying red pants ants.

Armadillo: remove shell as you would from a turtle, cut meat small and stew with wine and water, whole black peppers, red peppers and tarragon. At the finish spice with lemon juice and sherry. You can polish the shell and make a ribboned basket for camp, if you must. It'll be about as fetching as one of these parlor love-seats constructed of polished Texas steer horns and plush.

Badger: marinate in tarragon vinegar, salt and all sorts of peppers. Fry slices and eat with peppery sauce, or follow recipes under Wild Meat. Bats: Standard Chinese snack, plain dried or smoked. Simply chew on it as you would on a fried shrimp or a piece of blubber, or soak and savor any stew with it. Dried bats are hung over cook shops and other doors, as we hang horse shoes, to bring good luck, since the bat stands for longevity and happiness and the Chinese stand for anything that remotely resembles food. They've been driven to it, of course, by famine, the same as our sharecroppers have been reduced to grubs, toads and an almost inedible mush of cracked corn called "hushpuppy."

Wars, too have brought out the best in the exotic line. Paris was driven to snails just as Mexico City to cactus sandwiches when armies cut off their supplies of regular food.

Brains of Birds: from the time of Lucullan Romans down to expatriate American epicures in France, the brains of birds have been classed among the greatest of their dainties. Bird tongues, too. Nightingales, lark and mocking birds' tongues used to rate high in early days of decadence, not because they were more flavorsome, but because they sang and talked like humans. So the eating of them bore some sadistic relation to pseudo cannibalism or else those ancients wanted to be literally filled with song. Bear: See under Wild Meat.

Beaver: treat as you would a badger. Since both are as strongly flavored as musk-ox they must be pickled for several days, in peppery wine or spiced vinegar, as German sauerbraten beef is laid down in beer vinegar. When the beaver finally is stewed, all the condiments at hand are dumped into the pot. See under Wild Meat.

Blood: the blood of all animals is used in sausage and sauce. Rabbit doesn't amount to much unless cooked with its blood. Spiced blood sausage, or black pudding, is the cheapest and most sustaining snack throughout Europe. Buffalo: Pioneers cut steaks from buffalo, roasted the hump and cooked the muzzle with vinegar and savory herbs, like calf's head, then ate it with sauce vinaigrette, if they had the makings. And we can do the same now that our government is butchering some of the herd and selling it. See under Wild Meat.

Indians pickled the sliced hump in brine for 4 days, then smoked it with herbs, pounded it to meal, mixed it with buffalo or bear fat and carried it along like jerked venison to make quick soups and stews-see Pemmican.

Camel: Like buffalo, the hump is the best part. It's stewed with curry. The tripe is also succulent, with rice, yams or green wheat. Camel feet are esteemed when cooked like calf's feet and served with vinaigrette sauce. Candlefish: this two-way fish is prized in Alaska where plenty are caught to serve a double purpose. They are so fat that after being dried they can be lighted at either end and actually used as candles and they're just as useful for food rations, too.

Cannibals: Cannibals usually snack on other cannibals, but the wishbone of a missionary is a prized tidbit. So are his brains, if any. Druids were blood-thirsty cannibals who snacked on tempting cuts from their human sacrifices. An interesting account of piecing on assorted oddments of "long pig" as the cannibal's favorite meat is called, is contained in The Captivity of Hans Stade, translated by Sir Richard Burton. Cat: See Dog.

Chitterlings: Irwin Cobb's favorite snack is southern chitterlings. Negroes, through oppression, learned to make marvelous snacks out of all the scraps that white folks threw away. So the best that can be said of war, famine and slavery is that it's brought us some mighty savory cracklin' and tripe.

Coot: See Aquatic Birds under Wild Meat.