[Sca-cooks] snake

[Dan Phelps]

Was asked:

> I was just wondering- do we have any evidence that people ate snakes in
> period? Wouldn't they be likely to be though of as poisonous, even if they
> weren't? And seems to me that snakes were in that bundle of things that
> came out of the heaverns to annoy Peter- unclean thigns, whoich amkes me
> thing that they would no more be likely to eat them than to eat bugs and
> worms. I could be wrong though. Anyone got any ideas?

Well, ...don't know about European but in the Orient 'tis a different story
I'm told.  There is a long tradition of "medicinal" uses of snakes.  Years
ago I worked with an old engineer who told the following story from about
the Korean War era, presumedly the practice dates much earlier. He told me
that he was walking in a Japanese city with his "girl friend" when she
suggested that they go into a little shop.  In the shop were cages and cages
of snakes.  What was done was for the customer to select a snake.  The snake
was then pulled from the cage beheaded and the blood drained into a glass.
The customer would drink the blood.  It was said to "put lead in your
pencil".

YMMV

Daniel Raoul