Tastes like Chicken

 




Jim visited brother Dan in Palau mid 70s and came back with some wild stories of these gloriously beautiful tropical islands.  The ones that stuck with me are pretty much food related, go figure. 

There was an open-air movie theatre in Peleliu filled with wooden benches for seating.  Rats were bold enough to scavenge food whenever, so movie viewers kept their feet up on the forward bench.  

Hamburgers were served with a cabbage leaf for greenery, there being no iceberg lettuce on the island. 

He met our friend Virginia there, she was maybe 13.  That girl took down fruit bats with a sling shot, a treat for her grandmother. They are a large bat species with a two-foot wingspan. She’d spot a roosting fruit bat hanging upside down from a tree branch, pop a small rock into the slingshot, eyeball the angle and let loose.  She had incredible aim.  She’d nonchalantly balance in a squat to husk a coconut with a machete, (it always made me nervous.)   

Jim watched some guy, a living-rough tourist, capture a monitor lizard - they average around three feet long and their bite is venomous. The lizard proved hard to hold on to, and escaped into the ocean.  The guy went swimming in after it and recaptured the reptile.  Said he planned to eat it.  According to Wikipedia, they taste like chicken. 

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