By Lee Pitts

Legend has it that as a five-year-old, I ate a common garden snail. I don’t know why, but I assume it was either on a dare or that I got paid for it in some fashion. Knowing me as well as I do, I have to believe that cash was exchanged. When people hear that I ate a snail, they get a disgusting look on their faces and don’t want anything at all to do with me anymore, but I would remind these people, you perhaps being one of them, that the French eat five hundred million of the revolting creatures every year.

Now, you may think less of me for eating the legendary snail, but I’m not the only one who has eaten invertebrates and creepy-crawlies. You have too, it’s just that you don’t know it. For example, did you know that your average chocolate bar can have eight insect legs in it, or that the government regulates how many insect parts can be in the ketchup you digest on a daily basis? (Or is it catsup?) Years ago, I helped a family make wine from their own grapes, and you’d never drink wine ever again if you saw the things that got crushed right along with the grapes. So don’t think less of me just because I allegedly ate a snail one time.

I am not proud of many of the things I’ve eaten in my life. I’ve eaten everything from sweet and sour crickets to a plant-based hamburger (for research purposes only), which tasted like botulism on a bun. As a tyke, I remember constantly sucking on the stem of a wildflower, which I’ve now forgotten the name of, that I relied upon for my only source of sugar because my mom wouldn’t let us eat candy as kids. After I became independently wealthy from selling my first Grand Champion steer, I bought my own candy on a daily basis without my mom’s knowledge.

As a starving college student my favorite class was feeds and feeding because the professor said we should taste the oats, barley, corn, cottonseed, hay, etc, because that could help us identify the various feedstuffs in your average cattle ration. I’ve eaten corn that was steamed, cracked, and flaked, which I found quite delicious, although I did break my tooth on an intact kernel of corn once. Other than that, I was grateful the class was taught near lunchtime so I could get my lunch for free. Hey, don’t laugh at me, you who eat granola bars, which are no different than a swine ration I once pigged out on. I always figured if it didn’t kill a hog, then it wouldn’t kill me, and I’m sure it had a high TDN score, although in this case, TDN didn’t stand for Totally Digestible Nutrients but instead stood for Totally Delicious Nourishment.

To this day, I enjoy chewing on a stem of dairy and horse-quality alfalfa and Beef and Barley soup, which is my favorite Campbell’s soup because it tastes exactly like someone just threw a handful of barley in some beef gravy. Of course, there are some things I will not eat under any circumstances, and these include the above-mentioned cottonseed cake. I’m also not a big fan of oat hay either. When we had a garden, I enjoyed immature peas out of the pod, but when cooked, I couldn’t stand to eat peas in any form, especially pea soup. Yuck! And I couldn’t gag down brussels sprouts even if I poured Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup on top, my preferred ice cream topping.

I had a friend once who owned a feedlot right next to a plant that made Fritos® and other chips, and if that cattle ration was served in a bowl at a Super Bowl wingding, you’d have made a pig of yourself eating the cattle feed, it was so good. Plus, it was highly entertaining because the feedlot got the misshapen, swollen, or unique Fritos®, many of which almost resembled vulgar body parts. I guarantee If I’d been a pen rider at that feedlot, I’d have been so fat from a steady diet of the Frito® feed that horses would have run away from me at first sight.

Lee Pitts is an independent columnist for The Atascadero News and Paso Robles Press; you can email him at leepittsbooks@gmail.com