The dinner after Monday's sage grouse working group meeting was pretty much the same as after the other annual meetings. Thick steaks broiled over a propane grill, with some sort of potato. In this case, sliced and fried with onions. I passed on the potatos due to the onions. Also had sealed bags of prepared sliced salad (some of you would starve in our outfit), but little went to waste this time.

The guy across from me at our table (set up inside a working garage on the unit, by the way) remarked that there was more meat on his plate than he had eaten all week. Which swung the conversation around to the scarcity of meat in the diets of post-graduate students, and the occassional roadkills and research losses that they used to salvage to supplement their diets.

Which led the conversation into what types of unusual animals folks had eaten. It started with snow geese (not that unusual, but they reportedly taste like liver...everywhere). Claims of having tasted bighorn sheep, or even black bear, were not considered remarkable.

One who survived for a while on porcupines was able to report they taste just like pork. Have never eaten one, but have seen the skinned carcasses, and I believe him. White meat with a lot of fat.

One reported eating the breasts of one measly English sparrow (legal to kill here), just because he had allowed his son to shoot it, and of course you eat what you kill. Another had made extra money by exterminating starlings that roosted in farm buildings by the hundreds, and had eaten some of his victims.

Yum.

I made points by reporting I have tasted mountain lion (was boiling the skull on the stove, and it smelled too good to resist...like really tender roast beef...and yes, we still cook and eat out of that pot).

There was one lone female in the group, a Canadian.

Her most unusual meat?

Wolf.

Wolf pup, to be exact.

Okay, you win.