Latest / Ridiculous History / Dr. T. W. Stallings: One Man's Corvid-Hating Quest to Make Oklahoma Literally Eat Crow

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Dr. T. W. Stallings: One Man's Corvid-Hating Quest to Make Oklahoma Literally Eat Crow · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio KA.
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Speaker 1: Welcome to Ridiculous History. Thanks again as always for tuning in, folks.
0:33
Speaker 1: Shout out to our super producer, Casey the Crow Pegrams.
0:36
Speaker 1: Shout out to our guest producer Andrew the Raven Howard.
0:40
Speaker 1: Uh they called me Ben, I I didn't think of
0:43
Speaker 1: bird nicknames for the for us. That's that's as far
0:46
Speaker 1: as I got. You know, I'm triggered by bird nicknames. Ben,
0:49
Speaker 1: Thank you for for going giving me one. No, of course, Noll,
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Speaker 1: of course. This is Uh. This is an interesting episode
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Speaker 1: for both of us today because as you know, ride
1:00
Speaker 1: or die nol is. You know you're you're not a
1:03
Speaker 1: fan of birds for some I would say, some perfectly
1:06
Speaker 1: valid reasons. Well, I mean it depends, you know. I
1:10
Speaker 1: think it's possible that I have a manufactured, implanted memory
1:14
Speaker 1: of being dive bomb attacked by seagulls at the beach
1:17
Speaker 1: with my grandfather as a youth, But that may or
1:20
Speaker 1: may not have actually happened. It might just be one
1:21
Speaker 1: of the story I tell myself to explain my fear
1:24
Speaker 1: of birds. I was talking about this with my girl
1:26
Speaker 1: for the other night. I think I'm more afraid of
1:28
Speaker 1: like land walking birds that can really come at you,
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Speaker 1: you know, with wobbly goose type necks, or like ostriches
1:35
Speaker 1: and stuff, or shoe bill yeah, exactly, or like an
1:38
Speaker 1: emu or god forbid, a castuary. You ever seen those monsters.
1:42
Speaker 1: They can apparently disembowl you with a single claw, like
1:45
Speaker 1: in the Jurassic Park the book. I didn't make it
1:48
Speaker 1: to the movie, but yeah, there's kind of like weird dinosaurs.
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Speaker 1: And but I know that you're a fan of the corvids,
1:52
Speaker 1: and we've talked about this multiple times on this and
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Speaker 1: other shows. Um, I think it's a dream of yours
1:57
Speaker 1: to one day command an army of corvitte that can
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Speaker 1: do your bidding, but you would do stuff for them too,
2:02
Speaker 1: would be like a quid pro quote type arrangement. Yeah. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: So I'm I'm fascinated by the study of what is
2:08
Speaker 1: called non human intelligence, and corvids are brilliant. I just
2:13
Speaker 1: want to hang out with them. I want to have
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Speaker 1: a Corvid crew, and I'd prefer ravens, but you know,
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Speaker 1: I will accept crows. Uh. The at the most extreme version.
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Speaker 1: It reminds me of the television adaptation of True Blood. Uh. Spoilers,
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Speaker 1: there's a weird subplot as this show declined in quality
2:35
Speaker 1: about a vampire who has kind of created this relationship
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Speaker 1: with werewolves and it's a symbiotic relationship and maybe maybe
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Speaker 1: it would be something like that with crows. But today's
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Speaker 1: episode is about a guy named Dr. T. W. Stallings
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Speaker 1: who completely fundamentally disagrees with my, uh, with my opinion
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Speaker 1: of crows. No, this guy hated them. Well, I mean,
3:01
Speaker 1: to be fair, Ben, You're not a farmer during the
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Speaker 1: Great Depression, so crows are not really wreck in your
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Speaker 1: shop the way they were, uh Dr T. W. Stallings
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Speaker 1: and many other folks who were desperately in need of
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Speaker 1: a bountiful harvest. Right. So, in the nineteen thirties, crows,
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Speaker 1: as in Western civilization in general outside of of Ben
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Speaker 1: for the most part, were viewed as disease vectors. You know,
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Speaker 1: often have bad reputations in terms of superstition, like black cats. Um,
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Speaker 1: sort of like this uh concept of the lore of
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Speaker 1: the of the crow as being some sort of familiar
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Speaker 1: to like the devil or like you know, witches or
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Speaker 1: were warlocks or whatever. But most importantly, they were crop stealers.
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Speaker 1: I think we all know about the scarecrow. That's a
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Speaker 1: thing probably was successful in varying degrees. You think they
3:56
Speaker 1: would have gotten used to it them being so smart
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Speaker 1: and all right, then yeah, that's the thing. Part of
4:03
Speaker 1: the reason that crows and ravens can be such pest
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Speaker 1: is because they are intelligent enough to think ahead and
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Speaker 1: to plan more efficient ways to steal things basically, And
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Speaker 1: so yeah, you're you're absolutely right, dude, to a crow
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Speaker 1: or raven. You know, any kind of corvid might be
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Speaker 1: scared off by a human like figure or effigy in
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Speaker 1: a field for a short amount of time, but once
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Speaker 1: they realize, hey, this thing looks like a person but
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Speaker 1: it doesn't move, then it's just another tree basically, then
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Speaker 1: they're all about it totally. And I think the most
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Speaker 1: recent appearance of corvid's in our podcast life was on
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Speaker 1: a Strange News episode of Stuff That I Want You
4:48
Speaker 1: to Know, where we discussed a study that showed that
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Speaker 1: corvids actually have something called meta cognition, which is something
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Speaker 1: that humans have, which that's apart from their animals. Metic
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Speaker 1: cognition is quite literally thinking about thinking. So to your point,
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Speaker 1: then they can plan, they can observe, and they can
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Speaker 1: change their behavior accordingly, which is not not something to
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Speaker 1: sneeze at, you know, for a for a tiny what
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Speaker 1: what some people might malign as like bird brains or whatever.
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Speaker 1: You know, that is not a thing with these guys,
5:18
Speaker 1: right right, And you know, honestly, they are exceptional in
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Speaker 1: the avian field, but they've used their powers for trickery
5:28
Speaker 1: and to get over on humans. So it does make
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Speaker 1: sense that Dr. T. W. Stallings and many other people
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Speaker 1: in Oklahoma in the nineteen thirties, as he said, would
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Speaker 1: not care for these birds. It's already a very difficult
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Speaker 1: proposition to be a farmer, even if there is not
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Speaker 1: a crushing economic depression under way. So our episode today
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Speaker 1: concerns Dr. Stallings push throughout the state of Oklahoma to
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Speaker 1: get more of his fellow Oklahoma residents to start hunting
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Speaker 1: and eating crows. Yeah, and eventually Oklahoma's governor even got
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Speaker 1: in on the mix. He founded something called the State
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Speaker 1: House Crow Meat Lovers Association. And you know, Noel, you
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Speaker 1: and I both love uh talking about food. We're both
6:24
Speaker 1: adventurous eaters. Um, we're gonna have to get to ah,
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Speaker 1: We're gonna have to get through some of the problems
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Speaker 1: with eating crow. I think I think we are. And
6:35
Speaker 1: I gotta say, the crow meat Lover's pizza sounds like
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Speaker 1: the worst pizza ever of all time. Oh god, yeah,
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Speaker 1: unless it's spoiled meat and it's a pizza just for crows. Yeah,
6:47
Speaker 1: maybe with also like milk curds sprinkled on top or something. Um,
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Speaker 1: you know. We gotta remember though, in addition to all
6:54
Speaker 1: this crow hate, you know, literally just wanting to kill
6:57
Speaker 1: them because they were screwing up people's crops. It was
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Speaker 1: the Great Depression and meat was scarce, so any meat
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Speaker 1: you could get would be considered like a premium kind
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Speaker 1: of like that. Even like, you know, typically people were
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Speaker 1: subsisting on things like you know, dry goods like beans
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Speaker 1: and pasta and and uh, you know, hominy for example,
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Speaker 1: like in the South, right, So meat would have been
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Speaker 1: like a special treat kind of even crow meat. So
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Speaker 1: we're gonna get again, We're gonna get into some of
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Speaker 1: the ways this was prepared. But let's just backtrack to
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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six, when the residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma began
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Speaker 1: to kind of jump on board this crow eating bandwagon.
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Speaker 1: The butcher's. Local butchers would send their kids out into
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Speaker 1: the fields to kill and collect crow carcasses. They got
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Speaker 1: a dollar fifty. First I was reading this and I
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Speaker 1: was like, oh, a dollar fifty a crow, that seems reasonable. No,
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Speaker 1: it was a dollar fifty a dozen of crows, which
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Speaker 1: is uh yeah. And they would bring them back, chopped
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Speaker 1: their heads off, trust them up, and serve them, I imagine, however,
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Speaker 1: but again we're gonn give me some recipes later. And
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Speaker 1: this even became like remember how when like lobster was
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Speaker 1: like trash food, and like, like servants even petitioned the
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Speaker 1: government to force their masters not to serve them lobster
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Speaker 1: more than three times a week or something like that.
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Speaker 1: The crow was starting to occupy something of of a
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Speaker 1: you know, space like that, and that it was going
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Speaker 1: to be suggested as being like a staple food in
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Speaker 1: hospitals and just kind of like again like just the
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Speaker 1: go to meat of the era. Yeah. Yeah, And so
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Speaker 1: you can get a perspective on how these kids were
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Speaker 1: incentivized to hunt crows in batches of a dozen at
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Speaker 1: a time. Our inflation calculator tells us that one dollar
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Speaker 1: nine is equivalent to just a little bit over nineteen
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Speaker 1: dollars today, So there was some money for some kids there. Sure, yeah,
8:51
Speaker 1: but you're right. People were embracing this idea on multiple
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Speaker 1: organizational levels. One science teacher in Oklahoma, Miss odd Firth,
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Speaker 1: even established a class exclusively about how to cook crows.
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Speaker 1: That's a that's a niche education right there. And uh
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Speaker 1: Dr T. W. Stallings himself not a farmer, He was
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Speaker 1: the county health superintendent, and like you said, he was
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Speaker 1: a vociferous, self proclaimed crow hater. He said that crows
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Speaker 1: were a serious problem for Oklahoma farmers, a problem that
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Speaker 1: had only gotten worse in the years leading up to
9:33
Speaker 1: the mid nineties, and so he had this Bernese vibe
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Speaker 1: about him. The said, where Bernet's vibe? He said, all right,
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Speaker 1: we're gonna get the hearts and minds of our fellow
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Speaker 1: Oklahoma's focus on exterminating and eating crows so that we're
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Speaker 1: not just killing them for no reason. And we're gonna
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Speaker 1: do this, he said, in a lightbulb moment, through a
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Speaker 1: series of what I will call crow banquets. So we're
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Speaker 1: gonna trick people, We're gon because people love that, right,
10:02
Speaker 1: So we're gonna we're gonna invite all these folks over.
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Speaker 1: We're gonna cook them a nice sumptuous meal, because it's
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Speaker 1: hard to turn down a hot meal in the depression.
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Speaker 1: And then after they've eaten their fill and they're talking
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Speaker 1: about how how good this was, this meal was, we're
10:19
Speaker 1: going to tell them that they had, in fact dined
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Speaker 1: on crows and he had a recipe for it too.
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Speaker 1: It doesn't sound half bad, to be honest. I mean,
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Speaker 1: chrow meat is notorious for being dry and stringy. I've
10:33
Speaker 1: heard it described as tasting kind of livery. But at
10:36
Speaker 1: the same time, I like liver. I like liver and onions.
10:39
Speaker 1: I wouldn't eat like liver prepared many other ways, but
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Speaker 1: if it's like fried and like you know, rolled in
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Speaker 1: a nice gravy, it can it can be pretty palatable
10:49
Speaker 1: with you know, mushrooms and onion or something like that.
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Speaker 1: But they were doing something very similar with this. They
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Speaker 1: were coating, you know, plucking them, obviously coating them with lard,
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Speaker 1: which would you know, help keep them oyster, and then
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Speaker 1: cooking them in a sealed cast iron pan, likely kind
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Speaker 1: of a slow heat um so that it would kind
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Speaker 1: of stay as tender as possible, and you know, seasoned
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Speaker 1: and added celery and likely carrots and maybe some other
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Speaker 1: things like you might do with, you know, a roasted
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Speaker 1: chicken perhaps um, and then of course finishing all with
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Speaker 1: lots of gravy. Three crows to a person does a
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Speaker 1: meal make? And Stallings really was into this. He had
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Speaker 1: his reasons in terms of just like thinking about it
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Speaker 1: in terms of public health, I suppose, which is kind
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Speaker 1: of weird considering that you know, these crows were considered
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Speaker 1: diseased and vectors for disease and he was the head
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Speaker 1: of the health department. He was a big proponent for
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Speaker 1: people eating these. I wonder how they tested them to
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Speaker 1: make sure they weren't like contaminated or something that. Well,
11:50
Speaker 1: that's another that's he's kind of if if crows in
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Speaker 1: Oklahoma in the nineties are smurfs, then this guy's Stallings
11:59
Speaker 1: is definitely their artmel right. It's it's weird. They got
12:03
Speaker 1: pressed for this too. In the nineteen thirties, The Pittsburgh
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Speaker 1: Post Gazette reported this enthusiasm for consuming crow in In
12:13
Speaker 1: ninety six, Atlanta Constitution, which now exists as the Atlanta
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Speaker 1: Journal Constitution, reported how the then governor E. W. Marlin
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Speaker 1: and a group of state officials went to one of
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Speaker 1: these crow banquets and Marlin was so impressed. The story
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Speaker 1: goes that that caused him to establish this state house
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Speaker 1: Crow meat Lovers Association. And you know, crows are omnivorous
12:42
Speaker 1: right in many ways their vacuum cleaners. If you end
12:45
Speaker 1: up feeding a crow, all always be cautious about feeding
12:49
Speaker 1: wild animals. Usually not a great idea. But if you
12:51
Speaker 1: end up feeding and crow, the main thing you have
12:53
Speaker 1: to look out for is not feeding them stuff that
12:56
Speaker 1: has a lot of as salt. But if you end
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Speaker 1: up eating a crow, you're right, no, they they've got
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Speaker 1: a gamey taste. They can get grainy and stringy and tough,
13:05
Speaker 1: but they're they're dark meat. So if you prepare them
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Speaker 1: correctly from what I understand, I haven't done this, they
13:12
Speaker 1: can end up tasting a little bit like duck or goose,
13:15
Speaker 1: which can be you know, pretty delectable. Uh huh. I
13:18
Speaker 1: don't think I ever had a goose, but I can't.
13:22
Speaker 1: I always think of that seat in the office where
13:23
Speaker 1: it's a Christmas episode and Dwight finds a goose that's
13:27
Speaker 1: been hit on the side of the road and brings
13:29
Speaker 1: it into the office, you know, and he's supposedly gonna
13:31
Speaker 1: trust it up and you know, clean it right there
13:33
Speaker 1: and cook it for so he's like as a Christmas miracle,
13:36
Speaker 1: and of course they make him take it outside. But duck,
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Speaker 1: I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it
13:43
Speaker 1: is the darker of the dark meat. Like if if
13:45
Speaker 1: you think dark meat, chicken taste gamy, duck is probably
13:48
Speaker 1: gonna be extra that thing. But it's also fatty, which
13:53
Speaker 1: bothers some people. But if you're into cooking, one thing
13:55
Speaker 1: you can do with duck is cook it on our
13:58
Speaker 1: rack and then under a rack, slice up some potatoes
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Speaker 1: and put them underneath the duck so the drippings dripped
14:05
Speaker 1: down onto the potatoes. Then you get like duck fat
14:08
Speaker 1: fried potatoes, which has a real rich flavor to it. Um.
14:11
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, there were a lot of sacrifices that
14:14
Speaker 1: had to be made in the Great Depression, like instead
14:16
Speaker 1: of butter, they use drippings or fat. So probably having
14:20
Speaker 1: fatty you know, dark meat was probably a good thing
14:23
Speaker 1: because it made for more drippings they could then use
14:25
Speaker 1: in place of butter. Right, yeah, yeah, there's a great
14:29
Speaker 1: book that details this called Paradox of Plenty of Social
14:33
Speaker 1: History of Eating in Modern America. This is the kind
14:35
Speaker 1: of specific reference work that I love, just like the
14:38
Speaker 1: Kolanski's book about salt oh Ben. I had to bring
14:42
Speaker 1: up to some friends the other day. Uh, your fascination
14:45
Speaker 1: with very specific books. And if I'm not mistaken, you
14:47
Speaker 1: said you own a book exclusively on halibut cod God. Okay,
14:51
Speaker 1: my bad, I thought, because halibit came up and I
14:53
Speaker 1: was like, pretty sure my partner has a book exclusively
14:57
Speaker 1: on haliban. It's uh, yeah, it's it's uh. I would,
15:01
Speaker 1: by the way, I would totally buy and devour a
15:05
Speaker 1: book about haliban, just for the Haliban, just for the Haliban.
15:08
Speaker 1: So in this book by Harvey Levinstein, he talks about
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Speaker 1: the privation people face because, for a long long time,
15:17
Speaker 1: and still to a degree here in the States, eating
15:21
Speaker 1: is a social opportunity. It's when you see your friends,
15:24
Speaker 1: it's when you spend quality time with your family. And
15:28
Speaker 1: it was tough for people to adjust to having to
15:31
Speaker 1: change this pattern. During the depression. Instead of three meals
15:35
Speaker 1: a day, might have to like you said, no, people
15:39
Speaker 1: went back to very affordable grains and carved staples, right
15:45
Speaker 1: corn meal, pasta, beans, pancakes. The most common complaint people
15:50
Speaker 1: had at this time was that they were they were
15:53
Speaker 1: getting tired of eating, of eating the same stuff day
15:56
Speaker 1: in day out. Meats, fruits, a lot of other delicate
16:00
Speaker 1: sees like sweets pretty much disappeared due to either scarcity
16:04
Speaker 1: or affordability at this point, Like there were riots in
16:08
Speaker 1: small towns across the country where people were literally shouting,
16:13
Speaker 1: we want food. We will not let our children starve. Yeah,
16:18
Speaker 1: at least they weren't shouting, we want more variety, we
16:22
Speaker 1: will not eat beans again, because that would be a
16:25
Speaker 1: little I mean, at least they had something. No, it's true.
16:27
Speaker 1: And the people that had the beans and the pasta,
16:30
Speaker 1: and if they were lucky eggs, which really did take
16:34
Speaker 1: the places of meat, you know, because meats were just
16:36
Speaker 1: so hard to come by, they kind of had it good,
16:38
Speaker 1: you know. But it was it was pretty widespread, and
16:41
Speaker 1: of course they were you know, the swells in their
16:44
Speaker 1: ivory towers that probably had more than the rest of us.
16:47
Speaker 1: But yeah, in general, people were having to really subsist
16:51
Speaker 1: and then kind of scraped to get by. Not to
16:54
Speaker 1: mention that that's the that's the big thing about the
16:56
Speaker 1: Great Depression, right it was. It was the perfect storm
16:59
Speaker 1: of horrible, horrible things happening. One of which was uh,
17:03
Speaker 1: it would have exacerbated the issue of the crows, you know,
17:06
Speaker 1: attacking the crops. It was drought that already dried up
17:09
Speaker 1: crops all over the South. Share croppers in Alabama they
17:13
Speaker 1: referred to their diet as the three M diet, which
17:16
Speaker 1: was salt, pork, was the M, meat, corn meal, and molasses.
17:20
Speaker 1: Why the molasses. That dessert was that like the pudding
17:23
Speaker 1: cup of the Great Depression. So there are things called breadlines.
17:26
Speaker 1: I believe it's very similar to a soup kitchen ben
17:28
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken. Like a breadline is like a
17:30
Speaker 1: free handouts for for people in desperate situations or who
17:35
Speaker 1: are homeless. Yeah, it's for people who found themselves houseless
17:40
Speaker 1: or they were unable to find work. That was the majority.
17:44
Speaker 1: The majority of people were unemployed and fighting to stay
17:47
Speaker 1: in their homes or in their towns or with their relatives.
17:50
Speaker 1: And so you would wait in the in these long
17:53
Speaker 1: literal lines to get some sort of sustenance and it
17:57
Speaker 1: would be usually some kind of bread, especially in the
18:00
Speaker 1: North and and and like a lot of gangsters and
18:04
Speaker 1: criminals like Paublo Escobar for example, made a name for
18:07
Speaker 1: himself by giving food and clothes and things to less
18:12
Speaker 1: fortunate people who lived around the area of Medine where
18:15
Speaker 1: he did business. Al Capone ran a breadline, you know,
18:20
Speaker 1: to kind of I think probably engender some positive feelings
18:23
Speaker 1: among the people that he, like you know, was around
18:26
Speaker 1: in his in his actual neighborhoods. Yeah, like the Yakuza
18:29
Speaker 1: helping disaster stricken areas of Japan after earthquakes or other
18:34
Speaker 1: natural disasters. Do you know they've also been involved in
18:37
Speaker 1: organizing Halloween things. I jumped out, it's so weirdly adhering,
18:42
Speaker 1: But maybe a story for another You know, it's interesting
18:51
Speaker 1: because I have some roots in Appalachia and I can
18:55
Speaker 1: confirm from accounts of ancestors some of the horror story.
19:00
Speaker 1: But what occurred for those folks in in that time,
19:04
Speaker 1: Like one strategy was that children would eat on alternate days.
19:09
Speaker 1: I had a relative who would tell my parents about
19:13
Speaker 1: times where they were convinced that they were going to starve,
19:17
Speaker 1: only to have dug up an old frozen patch of
19:21
Speaker 1: potatoes and eaten those potatoes that were frozen in the ground,
19:26
Speaker 1: which gave them just enough sustenance to soldier on. But
19:31
Speaker 1: you know, urban areas, rural areas alike, they were all
19:35
Speaker 1: crushed by this. Ninety thousand businesses completely shut their doors,
19:40
Speaker 1: fifty million people lose their jobs, get their wages cut
19:44
Speaker 1: in half. If you read The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck,
19:48
Speaker 1: he's so exaggerating. Now, it's so good, and it's one
19:52
Speaker 1: of the first books that I was like, oh, this
19:55
Speaker 1: is a painting a picture, this is how it really was.
19:58
Speaker 1: It just feels like you're there and yeah, I mean
20:01
Speaker 1: spoiler alert, no, I'm not gonna do but at the
20:03
Speaker 1: end there's something that's absolutely heartbreaking that a character has
20:06
Speaker 1: to do to survive. Yeah. Yeah, that is a harrowing book.
20:11
Speaker 1: And it's based on this period of time in a
20:14
Speaker 1: realistic way. Twenty people that we know of committed suicide,
20:18
Speaker 1: which means certainly more ten thousand banks collapsed. The effects
20:24
Speaker 1: of the Great Depression remain in the modern day and
20:28
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. And that's that's the context
20:31
Speaker 1: in which this idea of eating crow occurs. Like people
20:36
Speaker 1: are going especially rural areas, people are saying, look, if
20:39
Speaker 1: I don't have two nickels to rub together to go
20:42
Speaker 1: to a deli, well then I'll just do what my
20:45
Speaker 1: grandparents are great grandparents did and I'll just hunt game,
20:48
Speaker 1: you know, the way like people in rural areas will
20:51
Speaker 1: still hunt game for a reliable source of nutrition today. Absolutely, yeah,
20:56
Speaker 1: and pro became an alternative, viable routine. There was not
21:00
Speaker 1: one person in this area of Oklahoma said yeah, I'm
21:05
Speaker 1: too good for it. Yeah, and it was you know,
21:07
Speaker 1: it was it was a kind of two pronged thing
21:10
Speaker 1: right where it was giving them some variation in their
21:13
Speaker 1: diets or perhaps the only thing they had. You know,
21:17
Speaker 1: that certainly could have been the case for many, But
21:18
Speaker 1: it also was helping out the farmers and potentially staving
21:22
Speaker 1: off that further loss of of of productivity to to
21:25
Speaker 1: their to their crops. So you know, it seemed like
21:28
Speaker 1: kind of helping out your neighbor in addition to like
21:30
Speaker 1: getting a meal in you. But this was not just
21:33
Speaker 1: an Oklahoma thing, by the way. It started to really spread,
21:37
Speaker 1: Like you saw reports out of Kansas, Georgia, Washington State,
21:41
Speaker 1: Illinois reporting this kind of surge in public interest in
21:45
Speaker 1: eating these birds. In August of n approximately two Americans
21:53
Speaker 1: per day wrote to the Department of Agriculture asking for
21:57
Speaker 1: details on quote, how crows might be cooked, stewed, fried,
22:01
Speaker 1: or roasted, and how crow broth can be made. Probably,
22:05
Speaker 1: do you think that's the that's the question for the
22:07
Speaker 1: Department of agg seems more like a good housekeeping kind
22:11
Speaker 1: of letter, you know, or like an Emily Post situation. Well,
22:14
Speaker 1: it was. It was a different time. You know, people
22:16
Speaker 1: in general wrote letters were offted. But but I I
22:20
Speaker 1: believe you are correct. They eventually probably had to put
22:23
Speaker 1: an intern on that. The fact that crews were plentiful
22:27
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma and many other parts of the country was
22:30
Speaker 1: helpful to stallings cause crow hunting clubs started popping up
22:35
Speaker 1: and there was sort of a a war maybe campaign
22:39
Speaker 1: is a better word for public favor to this approach
22:43
Speaker 1: of eating crew because in addition to having all these
22:47
Speaker 1: heavy dark folkloric associations or connotations, crews are scavengers, and
22:54
Speaker 1: so they were known to eat garbage, and so people thought, look,
22:58
Speaker 1: if I'm eating a crow, am I kind of just
23:01
Speaker 1: eating garbage with an extra step? Is that just like
23:04
Speaker 1: eating trash with extra steps? And uh? Yes and no? Right,
23:09
Speaker 1: I mean, well, catfish is good now, it's very true,
23:14
Speaker 1: and so so I yeah, but I would also say
23:16
Speaker 1: yes and no in that they're not clean, you know
23:21
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like you really have to. But I
23:23
Speaker 1: guess you would boil them, probably to get the feathers
23:25
Speaker 1: to pop off, and then pluck them like you do.
23:27
Speaker 1: So I suppose they're being like sanitized, but still just
23:30
Speaker 1: the whole concept just really gives me the creeps. Yeah,
23:33
Speaker 1: and you know, to be clear, I said, there was
23:36
Speaker 1: no one in it Oklahoma at the time who automatically
23:38
Speaker 1: said they were too good for it. But this was
23:41
Speaker 1: not everybody's favorite new food, and there were a couple
23:44
Speaker 1: of people outside of Oklahoma who are just like, forget this,
23:48
Speaker 1: We'll we'll get to them. Uh. But opinions vary on
23:52
Speaker 1: how this tasted for a lot of people as a
23:55
Speaker 1: curiosity or a kind of a desperate measure, or was
24:00
Speaker 1: a novelty. And like we said, they are gamy, they
24:04
Speaker 1: are dark meat. So a lot of the recipes that
24:07
Speaker 1: you see are similar to recipes that you can see
24:11
Speaker 1: for other gamey, tasty meat. You have as much like
24:15
Speaker 1: seasoning as possible in the mix to make it make
24:19
Speaker 1: it go down a little bit smoother. Sure, I mean,
24:22
Speaker 1: you know, like I love cooking with chicken thighs, but
24:26
Speaker 1: it's gotta be really really well seasoned. Whereas a chicken breast.
24:30
Speaker 1: You know, you could probably eat it, which is a
24:31
Speaker 1: little salt and pepper and it tastes pretty good. And
24:33
Speaker 1: then to me, the chicken thigh is the perfect level
24:35
Speaker 1: of gamey. I love this too, by the way, But
24:37
Speaker 1: I don't think we mentioned some folks. They were really
24:40
Speaker 1: trying to up the idea of the crow. So there
24:44
Speaker 1: were even people that referred to them as black partridges. Uh.
24:48
Speaker 1: It's just just kind of like, you know, a crow
24:50
Speaker 1: by any other name still tastes like crow. But there
24:54
Speaker 1: was this chef at the hotel Sherman named from non
24:58
Speaker 1: potrais pant that makes sense, punt Trough who it was,
25:02
Speaker 1: is a very fancy hotel, and he had a dish
25:06
Speaker 1: called crow on casserole. Uh. And if if I may,
25:10
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna read a little bit of the recipe.
25:12
Speaker 1: It sounds this sounds great. Actually, this recipe is specific
25:16
Speaker 1: enough to cook it, I think. So he skinned and
25:18
Speaker 1: dress like we said, put in a pan with butter,
25:21
Speaker 1: add garlic, then a third cup of white wine, which
25:25
Speaker 1: most people wouldn't have. They would not That's what I'm saying.
25:28
Speaker 1: This is like total shabby chic kind of situation, right. Uh.
25:32
Speaker 1: Strong veal gravy, which is already going to have a
25:35
Speaker 1: little bit of a livery kind of game equality to it. Right,
25:39
Speaker 1: Three tablespoons and then soybeans sauce. Does that mean soy sauce? Yes, yes,
25:44
Speaker 1: I think that's what that means, poured over the crow meat.
25:47
Speaker 1: And then the birds are cooked in a covered dish
25:49
Speaker 1: for two hours. Again that low and slow. It's got
25:52
Speaker 1: to be young birds. Take this goes to quote directly
25:54
Speaker 1: from the recipe. Young birds taken in the spring required
25:57
Speaker 1: just one hour, Chef punt Row said. And then of
26:01
Speaker 1: course mushrooms, small cubes of fried salt pork, and small
26:06
Speaker 1: glazed onions. Sounds pretty good. And people who tried this
26:12
Speaker 1: fancy like elevated cuisine approach overwhelmingly liked it. People had said,
26:18
Speaker 1: you know this surprisingly and I like it a little
26:21
Speaker 1: bit better than wild duck. And it's tasty and it's
26:24
Speaker 1: deliciously prepared. But as we said, some people, not in
26:29
Speaker 1: Oklahoma but other places felt like they were already too
26:33
Speaker 1: good for this, and they looked down their nose at it.
26:35
Speaker 1: There was one chef in Atlanta ninety six who said,
26:40
Speaker 1: roast crow bab b a h. People used to say
26:44
Speaker 1: that bah bah, Yeah, where's the humbug? Folks just don't
26:49
Speaker 1: go in for that kind of meat. So far as
26:51
Speaker 1: I'm concerned, to eat and crow will continue to be
26:53
Speaker 1: nothing but a political expression. It's interesting, that's a really
26:58
Speaker 1: no no. I think we I think we've been sort
27:01
Speaker 1: of alluding to this, uh, and that it was almost
27:04
Speaker 1: like a patriotic act to kill the crows at least
27:08
Speaker 1: because you were kind of helping your your neighbor, your
27:10
Speaker 1: farming neighbors. But also it was kind of an act
27:14
Speaker 1: of what's the word I'm looking for, like societal kind
27:17
Speaker 1: of like it was sort of like an act of
27:19
Speaker 1: bringing everyone together behind like a common enemy, right in
27:22
Speaker 1: a time where people felt desperately out of control. There's
27:25
Speaker 1: an account from um The Oklahoman from a woman named
27:28
Speaker 1: Sue Simpson who cooked this meat for a husband, talking
27:32
Speaker 1: about quote, feeling that it might be the patriotic thing
27:34
Speaker 1: to do. I bought some and baked crow for dinner.
27:37
Speaker 1: As I recall, there was not enough meat on the
27:39
Speaker 1: bones to make it worthwhile. I do not remember how
27:41
Speaker 1: it tasted, but I do know that I did try
27:43
Speaker 1: to eat it. My husband said that he did not
27:46
Speaker 1: mind eating crow. As in quotes. If he had done
27:49
Speaker 1: something to apologize for but did not expect to see it,
27:52
Speaker 1: served to dinner, and to please not do it again
27:54
Speaker 1: right Like you know, it takes a lot to make
27:56
Speaker 1: him marriage work. It was on his fee is in queues.
28:01
Speaker 1: It's true. This was a trend that came about of desperation.
28:06
Speaker 1: It had this patina of patriotism, and it was meant
28:11
Speaker 1: as a way of combating loss of crops. But after
28:16
Speaker 1: times became less desperate, this trend fizzled. There was one
28:20
Speaker 1: person who didn't give up on it, and you can
28:22
Speaker 1: guess who he is. Fellow ridiculous historians. Dr T. W.
28:26
Speaker 1: Stalls himself. He was full gargamel, as they say in Gattica.
28:30
Speaker 1: He saved nothing for the swim back. Uh. He was
28:34
Speaker 1: as late as ninety seven he was finding every reporter
28:39
Speaker 1: that would listen to him and extolling the virtues of
28:42
Speaker 1: eating crows. I wonder if he had a situation where
28:45
Speaker 1: he got like attacked by one or something as a kid.
28:48
Speaker 1: And that's where we are today. If you go to
28:50
Speaker 1: almost any restaurant in the US, it will be virtually
28:54
Speaker 1: impossible to find a genuine like dish made of crow
29:00
Speaker 1: it's even less common than turtle soup, which we talked
29:04
Speaker 1: about in the past, which is, you know, mainly common
29:07
Speaker 1: in New Orleans, Maryland and parts of DC. Now, yeah,
29:11
Speaker 1: and then you'll, you know, you'll you'll go to some
29:13
Speaker 1: fancy restaurants, so you'll see things like squab or other
29:16
Speaker 1: like gamy weird small birds on the menu as kind
29:20
Speaker 1: of a flex like, look look at how amazing our
29:23
Speaker 1: cooking is that we can make this weird trash bird
29:25
Speaker 1: tastes good. But I don't even know if like you know,
29:28
Speaker 1: Heston Blumenthal would try messing with crow. Maybe our friend
29:32
Speaker 1: Richard Blaze, maybe he might take a shot at it.
29:35
Speaker 1: But but the but most you're right, most folks won't.
29:40
Speaker 1: This has become kind of a closed chapter in the
29:43
Speaker 1: history book. But it leaves us with another conversation that
29:47
Speaker 1: we've talked about a little bit in the past. There
29:51
Speaker 1: are so many somewhat arbitrary cultural taboos about what is
29:57
Speaker 1: or is not fit to eat here in the u US,
30:00
Speaker 1: in the West overall. And if there hadn't been the
30:02
Speaker 1: Great Depression, crows would have been five people wouldn't have
30:06
Speaker 1: been trying to eat them. And what is now referred
30:10
Speaker 1: to as kind of the crow craze raises questions about
30:14
Speaker 1: what makes us consider something edible or something disgusting, and
30:20
Speaker 1: how culturally changeable or fluid these things might be like that,
30:24
Speaker 1: like nutria is another example, or raccoons or I think
30:30
Speaker 1: everybody's fine with eating alligators now right. It does seem
30:34
Speaker 1: that way, But there's even a broader conversation than that.
30:37
Speaker 1: And we've talked about this too. It's like the whole
30:40
Speaker 1: socially acceptable lime for like, it's okay to eat rabbit
30:44
Speaker 1: to some, but definitely not okay to eat cat. You know,
30:48
Speaker 1: at least in the United States. Crow just seems like
30:51
Speaker 1: it's nasty and probably not necessary and and really just
30:55
Speaker 1: probably limited to an active desperation. There's a really gross
30:59
Speaker 1: scene and always sunny in Philadelphia. You might remember it
31:02
Speaker 1: and fight like a crow, Fight like a crow. But
31:05
Speaker 1: he eats a crow and it's like tainted or something,
31:08
Speaker 1: and he starts like getting violently ill Frank's character. You're Frank,
31:12
Speaker 1: the Danny de Vito's character, and I think he almost
31:15
Speaker 1: starts like hallucinating off of the rotten crow or the
31:18
Speaker 1: tainted crow or something like that. But yeah, it definitely
31:22
Speaker 1: does not seem like. I mean, I think even animals
31:25
Speaker 1: would probably steer away from it if they could. It's
31:29
Speaker 1: funny because the whole time we're researching this episode, I
31:32
Speaker 1: just kept rewatching clips of the Fight Milk episode of
31:37
Speaker 1: Always Stunny in Philadelphia with like crow eggs and some
31:41
Speaker 1: kind of nutritional substance in a ton of like vodka.
31:45
Speaker 1: I think it was disgusting. But what is that show
31:48
Speaker 1: not given us? It hasn't given us something that we're
31:52
Speaker 1: going to give you now, folks, this had to be
31:55
Speaker 1: occurring to a lot of our fellow listeners today. Is
31:59
Speaker 1: this the origin of the old saying to eat crow? Luckily,
32:11
Speaker 1: according to our good friend Man Guess had a coutur,
32:15
Speaker 1: co founder of Mental Floss and a guy who actually
32:17
Speaker 1: hangs out with us, it's not true. It's also the
32:21
Speaker 1: perfect time to wish him the absolute best in his
32:24
Speaker 1: new venture. You were very sad to lose him at
32:27
Speaker 1: the company as a colleague, but we will remain dear friends.
32:31
Speaker 1: Been been with him for a long time and he's
32:33
Speaker 1: a lovely guy. But yeah, he wrote this article himself
32:36
Speaker 1: back when he was still a Mental Floss and he
32:39
Speaker 1: traced the origin of the expression to eat crow somewhere
32:43
Speaker 1: completely different. Yeah. Yeah, so when when you say to
32:48
Speaker 1: eat crow, it kind of has this feeling of like
32:51
Speaker 1: other expressions like oh he had egg on his face
32:54
Speaker 1: or uh, oh they had to eat humble pie. De
32:57
Speaker 1: crow means to humiliate onesell and there's a legend about
33:02
Speaker 1: it that dates back to eighteen twelve. During a truce
33:05
Speaker 1: in the War of eighteen twelve, Apparently a guy from
33:08
Speaker 1: New England walked over to the British camp to do
33:11
Speaker 1: some hunting and he got irritated because he's like, uh,
33:16
Speaker 1: we're in the middle of a war. I can't find
33:18
Speaker 1: any deer or rabbit or what have you. I'm just
33:21
Speaker 1: gonna shoot the first thing I see. And the first
33:24
Speaker 1: thing he saw was a crew and he shot it.
33:27
Speaker 1: But a British guy, a British officer heard the gunshot right, Yes,
33:31
Speaker 1: that's right, And the British officer gave the American props
33:35
Speaker 1: on his marksmanship and then asked him to see the weapon,
33:40
Speaker 1: to hold the weapon um with which he had he
33:42
Speaker 1: had made this crack shot and uh being a bit
33:47
Speaker 1: on the gullible side. Um. The American handed over the weapon,
33:51
Speaker 1: after which, of course the British officer turned it on
33:54
Speaker 1: him and yelled at him and basically humiliated him and
33:59
Speaker 1: forced him to eat a bite of the crow that
34:02
Speaker 1: he had just killed, uncooked feathers and all yeah. Uh.
34:08
Speaker 1: And the guy tried to beg but you know what
34:11
Speaker 1: could he do? The British dude had his guns, so
34:15
Speaker 1: he ate a piece of the crow. The officer returned
34:18
Speaker 1: his firearms, said okay, go home, get out of here,
34:20
Speaker 1: away with you. Uh. And before the British guy could leave,
34:27
Speaker 1: the new Englander was very angry, turned the gun on
34:30
Speaker 1: the officer and made him eat the rest of the
34:33
Speaker 1: burt also uncooked, also unplucked. Uh. The story concludes that
34:38
Speaker 1: the British officer was furious. The next day he went
34:41
Speaker 1: to the American camp and he demanded retribution and satisfaction.
34:45
Speaker 1: The US commanding officers had the soldier brought to him
34:49
Speaker 1: and they said, you know, have you seen this guy before,
34:53
Speaker 1: this British dude. And the soldier was trying to lie
34:57
Speaker 1: pro very cape, but he couldn't, so eventually he stuttered, yes, Captain,
35:04
Speaker 1: I dined with him yesterday. And that's that's the joke.
35:09
Speaker 1: They have heard other versions of this as a joke.
35:11
Speaker 1: I heard one. It was pretty popular in the military
35:15
Speaker 1: about this occurring in um, the Sahara or the Middle East,
35:19
Speaker 1: but it was a much filthier version because it was
35:21
Speaker 1: like the military version, it wasn't crow they were eating. Yeah,
35:25
Speaker 1: I don't know. I love this account. This is a
35:28
Speaker 1: great story. I still have to wonder if if it's
35:32
Speaker 1: not a little in dispute as to whether it came
35:34
Speaker 1: from this or the idea of like eating crow as
35:37
Speaker 1: being sort of like the worst case scenario, you know,
35:41
Speaker 1: like as we use it in terms of like having
35:43
Speaker 1: to eat our words and we've said something stupid. So
35:46
Speaker 1: I don't know this this does this does hold up?
35:48
Speaker 1: Like basically the bridge should not have given that gunback.
35:51
Speaker 1: What do you think was gonna happen? Yeah, you're right.
35:53
Speaker 1: That's a behavior that makes me think it is legend.
35:59
Speaker 1: We know that. Uh. The exact origin, the real origin
36:02
Speaker 1: of the idiom is largely unknown today, but if first
36:07
Speaker 1: probably went in print somewhere in the eighteen fifties, and
36:11
Speaker 1: it was also a story about a dim witted American dude.
36:14
Speaker 1: So we have to eat our crow in that regard.
36:17
Speaker 1: But nol, what an episode. I um, you know, I
36:20
Speaker 1: feel bad for the crows at that time, but they
36:26
Speaker 1: were being they were a threat to the lives of
36:30
Speaker 1: these farmers, not just their livelihoods. And also, as we
36:34
Speaker 1: talked about with our pal Andrew the Raven Howard just
36:38
Speaker 1: before recording, there is this slippery slope people get into
36:42
Speaker 1: when they say you shouldn't dine on intelligent animals, right,
36:46
Speaker 1: because cows are intelligent, pigs are intelligent. Crows certainly are.
36:52
Speaker 1: Crows certainly are Unfortunately for them, they're probably the least
36:55
Speaker 1: delicious of the intelligent animals. Uh doubt people are gonna
36:59
Speaker 1: stop eating cow and pig anytime soon. Um. Cephalopod is
37:02
Speaker 1: another thing I don't I just I haven't finished it,
37:05
Speaker 1: but I started watching that documentary My Octopus Teacher. Yeah,
37:09
Speaker 1: it's so good. It's beautifully shot. It's a wonderful story
37:13
Speaker 1: about this guy that just like you know, basically becomes
37:17
Speaker 1: a sea creature. For lack of a better way of
37:20
Speaker 1: describing it. Um, But when you see the playfulness of
37:25
Speaker 1: these creatures and then how they can connect with this guy,
37:29
Speaker 1: you'd probably be hard pressed to slice up mo tentacle
37:33
Speaker 1: and dipping in soy sauce again. Yeah, yeah, which might
37:37
Speaker 1: be which might be a story for another day. But
37:42
Speaker 1: as he said, octopus also is delicious. UM as a
37:47
Speaker 1: huge fan of UH. The intelligence of the octopus, I've
37:51
Speaker 1: I've tried to remove them from my diet, which you
37:54
Speaker 1: know is luckily for people like us living so far inland,
37:59
Speaker 1: it's not too difficult for us to remove octopus from UH.
38:04
Speaker 1: It would be a lot tougher to remove like chicken wings.
38:08
Speaker 1: Because this is Atlanta, they're everywhere, all right. I don't
38:11
Speaker 1: know about you know, I am getting a little bit hungry,
38:14
Speaker 1: not quite famished. I think we fly like a crow
38:19
Speaker 1: into our next episode. But how about this, folks, what's
38:24
Speaker 1: the weirdest thing that you have eaten? What's the one
38:28
Speaker 1: thing if you have one that you've always wanted to try?
38:32
Speaker 1: And then, perhaps most directly, would you eat a crow? Why?
38:35
Speaker 1: Or why not? Oh? Don't let other crow see you
38:38
Speaker 1: eating a crow. They are intelligent enough to know what
38:42
Speaker 1: is happening. They are also smart enough to remember your
38:45
Speaker 1: face and teach their friends what you look like. They
38:48
Speaker 1: will mess you up and come for you. They will
38:52
Speaker 1: come for you. There's a study that proves it. They're
38:54
Speaker 1: actually a couple of studies and anecdotes that prove it,
38:57
Speaker 1: but thanks as always to our super producer Casey Pegram,
39:02
Speaker 1: to our guest producer Andrew Howard, and you know what
39:04
Speaker 1: always thinking I was in conversation about this earlier. We
39:08
Speaker 1: need to give a much deserved shout out to our
39:11
Speaker 1: graphic designer, Pam Peacock, who made our logo for the
39:16
Speaker 1: show that respued and logo that's all. It is all Pam,
39:21
Speaker 1: And we've got some surprises coming in the very near
39:24
Speaker 1: future which involved Pam. Uh. I'm gonna leave it at that.
39:29
Speaker 1: That's true. It's a you know, we're two guys who
39:32
Speaker 1: are literally paid to read about weird stuff and then
39:35
Speaker 1: talk for a living. So it is. It's been somewhat
39:40
Speaker 1: difficult for us to keep some of these secrets. But
39:42
Speaker 1: I think we're doing an okay job so far. I know,
39:44
Speaker 1: but don't you love that? And when I say love,
39:46
Speaker 1: I obviously mean hey when people on the internet are like, guys,
39:49
Speaker 1: got some big stuff coming, can't talk about it yet,
39:52
Speaker 1: but trust me, it's gonna pop off. Okay, it's gonna
39:55
Speaker 1: be awesome. We didn't quite do it that egregiously, but
39:59
Speaker 1: you know it what it is. But seriously, stay tuned.
40:01
Speaker 1: Big stuff on the Horizon in the meantime, Huge thanks
40:05
Speaker 1: to super producer Casey Pegrom to guest producer Andrew A.
40:09
Speaker 1: How the Crow, the Raven, the Blackbird, Raven McKnight, Howard
40:17
Speaker 1: the Third? Is he a third? He's baby? He might
40:21
Speaker 1: as well be? And are I hope you're not alluding
40:23
Speaker 1: to my tweet where I said I had a difficult
40:27
Speaker 1: time with an episode of stuff. They don't want you
40:29
Speaker 1: to know that I couldn't talk about It's okay, okay,
40:33
Speaker 1: well yes, uh oh gosh, yeah that was a real
40:38
Speaker 1: how was a real weird one that we just did
40:40
Speaker 1: earlier this week? But yes, thanks of course to Alex
40:44
Speaker 1: the Ephemist, Williams like e femorist like uh and big
40:49
Speaker 1: thanks to Eve's Jeff Coat, big big thanks to Christopher
40:54
Speaker 1: hassy Otis, both of whom shall be returning soon. And
40:58
Speaker 1: let's have a big old coca for our number one raven,
41:05
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, a k. The Quister. I don't want him
41:08
Speaker 1: to be a raven. I like ravens too much. Let's
41:11
Speaker 1: make him well. Crows are cool too, Magpie. What kind
41:15
Speaker 1: of bird would he be if he was a bird?
41:18
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know. For birds, Ben, you're
41:20
Speaker 1: asking the wrong guy. Any any any bird that I
41:23
Speaker 1: associated him in my mind would be an insult. So
41:27
Speaker 1: about a cocket deal. I like a cockat deal. They've
41:31
Speaker 1: got they've got a cool little plume, you know, on
41:33
Speaker 1: their head dress. I could see that. I could see that,
41:36
Speaker 1: and that feels like a compliment. For some reason, A
41:38
Speaker 1: cocket deal does get his vibe. What are we talking about?
41:42
Speaker 1: Tune into an upcoming episode of Ridiculous History to hear
41:47
Speaker 1: for yourself. M hmm. We'll see you next time, Fox Yeah.
42:07
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
42:09
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
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Speaker 1: your favorite shows.