Niagara’s New Girl

A roommate’s afternoon activity turned into a tasty treat for all

More stories from Lauren Kritter

Niagaras New Girl

I’m not normally one to judge other peoples’ meal choices.

Especially considering my usual dinner time routine consists of spending about ten seconds in the kitchen as I open up my fridge and reach for my plus size container of hummus to dip my pretzels in.

My other go-to option is ordering discounted food from Grizzly’s. It’s exponentially better than anything I can make myself and can be prepared for me in a fraction of the time it would take to do myself.

That being said, my roommates are the ones who use the kitchen the most. Most of the time they aren’t cooking anything too extravagant, but none the less it’s more than I do for myself.

It wasn’t until the other day that I walked into the kitchen and was actually surprised to see what my roommate was cooking.

A squirrel freshly killed that very day with a bow and arrow.

At first I was in shock when I found him sitting on our kitchen floor skinning the squirrel with one of our good knives. But then I remembered not to let the situations that I encounter in my house this year shock me.

Being the animal lover that I am, I decided to stay out of it as I headed out the door for work. Partaking in the eating of his “big catch” was not on my agenda for the day.

That’s not to say I didn’t feel bad for the little buddy who lost his life that day. I apologized to his dead corpse on my roommates behalf before I left.

I knew he was excited about his afternoon catch, but I don’t think he considered what college squirrels eat on the daily.

The university squirrels hang around outside our house for a reason — there is never a shortage of food outside our back door. Whether it be leftover pizza, chicken wings or graham crackers, the squirrels have more of a dinner buffet each night than I do.

There was no way I was going to ingest an animal that lives on as much garbage as the squirrels outside our house do. But not for the first time in my life, I spoke too soon.

Maybe the bandwagon effect or my own curiosity is to blame, but when I got home that night, somehow the boys talked me into trying the fresh kill they cooked up.

I know I sound hypocritical, but if there’s one thing I learned thus far, it’s that you can never expect what’s going to happen in our house, which is how I found myself forking a piece of squirrel into my mouth.

I have to say it wasn’t as weird as I imagined it would taste. It was slimy and a bit greasy, sort of like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Along with adding living with a house full of boys to the list of things I’ve done in college, I can now say I ate a bite of freshly killed squirrel.

Though to be completely honest, I’m still not exactly sure how I feel about that choice.