Yesterday, in “Thinking About…Lettuce,” I mentioned some wild foods. One I forgot to name was—turtle!!!
(from Ky Energy and Environment Cabinet)
I was not aware Kentucky was home to the Alligator Snapping Turtle. Apparently, they are rare in our state. Boy, I sure wouldn’t want to meet up with one of those! The Common Snapping Turtle is handful enough for me.
I can just see myself in my jonboat in Caney, reaching down to pull up a trotline or jug and coming face-to-face with an Alligator Snapping Turtle. It would certainly make for a good story.
My father Kenny Autry tells a good turtle story from his noodling days (for a retelling, see him). Noodling is catching catfish with your hands.
(from Amazon.com)
Story goes, two men, my grandfather Tom Autry and another man I won’t name, were trying to get a catfish out of a submerged log in Old Caney Creek. Logs are favorite places for catfish to nest. Sometimes, a hollow log will have two holes. If that’s the case, it takes two men stopping up/blocking each hole with hands, arms and knees, otherwise the fish will escape.
Apparently, this unnamed man wasn’t too keen on noodling, an attitude I share, by the way. On this day, at a previous log, this “reluctant noodler” had allowed a fish to escape. When it rushed at him, rather than blocking it, he simply raised up and allowed it to exit. But his move didn’t go unnoticed! My grandfather saw it happen and gave him a thorough tongue-lashing. So when they came to the next log, my grandfather had scared the man so bad that the man was not willing to try the move again.
Picture it in your mind. A submerged log, one man at each end, and one of them scared to death he would let a fish escape and incur the other man’s wrath.
Understand this—folks didn’t do this as a hobby or for recreation; this was subsistence, this was food on the table.
So here we go…my grandfather, Papaw Tom, starts poking a stick in his end of the log to see if there is a fish inside. Sure enough there was! And like clockwork, it rushed straight to the other end, right into this reluctant noodler.
Here’s the humor—the man is determined not to let my grandfather down again. He starts screaming! Squalling! “Tom, it’s killing me! Tom! Tom!” But he musters the courage to stay, to hold his ground at all cost. “I’m dying here, Tom! Come get it! Get it off me!”
This catfish and man were locked in a deadly battle. Here’s the kicker! It wasn’t a catfish! It was a mean ol’ snapping turtle. The short of it is this snapping turtle plumb tore up the reluctant noodler!
The ending? How bad were his injuries? Who won? Did the turtle end up on a dinner platter?
(from MissHomemade.com)
Ask my dad. He can fill in the details. Now that I think about it, though, maybe I should turn this into a full-blown short story. Maybe.
Moving on, how many of you have eaten fried turtle or turtle soup? I have. Straight out of my favorite body of water. That’s right, Caney Creeeeeek!
It is said that our 1909-1913, 27th President William Howard Taft’s favorite dish was snapping turtle soup.
(from Britannica)
I remember growing up hearing there were seven different kinds of meat textures in snapping turtle—shrimp, goat, pork, fish, lamb, beef, and chicken. I can attest to there being at least some semblance of truth in that. I haven’t eaten turtle since my youth because frankly they stink, but I remember skinning them and seeing and touching the different kinds, and colors, of meat in the tail, the legs, the neck, etc.
Am I grossing you out?! My apologies! I said yesterday I needed to devote more time to rural life. Let’s call this “rural reality.”
Here’s some more gross, but interesting, turtle knowledge…if you dare!
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