Why Google should make room for raccoon recipes

My CNET handler called today. He is the man who yanks at the canine lead permanently attached around my throat and croaks: "Write, puppy, indite."

My handler said he had been present at last week's Crunchie awards, something to do with giving c hocolate bars to fine new Internet companies. And he told me that he heard Google's Marissa Mayer whisper that in these times of infinite woe, more people were googling "recipes" than "restaurants."

The best thought that came into my mind was just cardinal word: raccoon. You view, these brazen, beady-eyed burglars waft around my neighborhood fueled by the desire to deplete everything I own. Yes, even my house. And whenever I see them, I query what they would taste like barbecued with some roast potatoes and a little broccoli.

Now I discover that raccoon is rapidly becoming the other dark meat. The raccoon apparently had pride of place in the honours edition of the Joy Of Co oking in 1931. And here's the righteous news: you can buy one for between $3 and $7.

With that tiny outlay, one that simultaneously eliminates one of the lower-level civil servants of the animal world, you can feed fivesome people.

Knock my trash cans ov er one more time and you might find yourself baked with apples.

(Credit: CC Michael Sheltgen)

Please enjoy these words, printed in the Kansas Municipality Star, from J eff Beringer, a furbearer resource biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation: "Racoon meat is some of the healthiest meat you can eat. During grad school, my roommate and I ate 32 'coons one winter. It was all free, and it was really good. If you think about being green and eating organically, raccoon meat is the ultimate organic food."

Yes, those varminty scavengers who try to knock over my trash cans have no steroids, no antibiotics, no growth hormones--just my evil thoughts drif ting around their systems.

If you are, by any amount, offered a raccoon by a man in a highway rest area, here's the simple test: Trappers chop only three of the raccoon's four paws off. This is simply to prove that the carcass is not that of a cat or a dog.

Thankfully, when you Google "raccoon recipes," the first one that comes up is from Cooks.com. It is, indeed, barbecued raccoon. And it sounds, I know you'll agree, very tasty.

I feel confident that the minute I post this elegy to one of man's favorite little critters, demand for raccoon cuisine creativity will shoot up. Perhaps there will soon be an edition of Top Chef devoted to the furry figure. (C an there possibly be such a thing as rack of raccoon?)

I sincerely hope that Marissa and the other steaming brains at Google are full prepared for a massive change in America's eating habits.

Cheers~