What do Tarantulas and Bats have in Common?

I'm going to fully blame the following post on my husband. The trauma associated with what happened is his fault too. Just because I got sucked into his evil plot does not make me a party to it. I claim plausible deniability.

We had just sat down for dinner. An informal one as we were all eating in the living room, save LJS who was in the garage cooking. He was deep-frying, a new recipe that he'd been looking forward to trying of smoked salmon, cream cheese, and chives wrapped in a wonton wrapper. It was delicious, especially when dipped into the sauce.

Anyway, as I said, we'd just sat down to dinner. LJS had started watching this new show with Short Person called "Bizarre Food". He said he was doing it as a way of proving to her that what we attempt to get her to eat is not that bad. If you've never seen it, the show features a man who essentially travels the world tasting bizarre food. If you ask me, they could have called the show Disgusting Eats and accomplished the same audience base.

Tonight's show was on location in Cambodia. I should have known better than to watch, but I was eating and too lazy to get up and find the remote-- and of course, LJS had decided on the TV program and he was going to come back soon. He'd be mad if the channel was changed. Manly remote thing going on, right? If only I'd been brave enough to just do it. Change the channel. But no...

The show floated in and out of my brain as I only marginally paid attention, that is, until he decided to try a new dish. Deep Fried Tarantulas. Even now, the mere thought of it brings the rise of bile in my throat and the overwhelming desire to hide and think of lovely things like... anything other than spiders.

Spiders. If you've known me for any length of time, you know that I can't stand the creepy, crawly things. The sight of them makes me dart for cover, so you can imagine how I'd react to a discussion of hunting, cooking, and EATing them.

I stared in rapt fascination as they talked about how they found them and put them into a bucket or sack or somesuch. Then watched in shock as they talked about removing their fangs, coated them with seasoning, and then tossed them in to a skillet of oil-- still alive. If that weren't enough, they then explained that during cooking you had to stand back because they EXPLODED. Since I was near puke point by now-- and he hadn't even started eating them yet-- I may have lost some of the explanation, but I think the exploding had to do with the venom sack overheating and boiling or something.

EW!! I'm trying so hard to write this and be okay, but... EW! I'm traumatized. Because once they were cooked, evenly seasoned and crisp, still looking all-together too much like a very large spider, he ATE a leg.



I barely made it through the segment. My appetite having left abruptly during the tarantula bit, came back little by little. I still wasn't smart enough to change the channel. And I should have because what came next was almost worse.

Next, was deep fried bats. Their mouths gaping open in horror. Fruit bats do not look any less menacing than their relatives-- the evil, vampire-changing kind with fanged teeth. By the end of that segment, I couldn't eat any more. I wasn't sure I'd ever eat again. The mere thought of it nearly my undoing.

And, what they say about taste, sight, and smell having memory retention is true. That great recipe LJS found and cooked is forever linked with tarantulas and fried bats. A common link for the ages. Memories of the damned.

Short Person, who sat calmly on the couch playing Nintendo and only listening with half an ear, is totally fine and still considers hamburger the bane of all existence, and us cruel parents for making her try bites of food at dinner. Wonder what she'd do if I plopped a deep fried bug in front of her!

The things we do in the name of parenting, eh?