This baby tumbled out of a rotting Ponderosa Pine I felled several years ago for firewood. It had only rotted a little at the base and apparently this creature was born in the midst of that spot of decay. This was near the time I had just formed my company and I was flush with cash enough to not be worrying at all about food, but I did understand that most startups in the USA fail within the first three years, or less. So I spent a long while looking at it and wondering what it would taste like. I had read plenty of survival books and watched plenty of survival documentaries and programs to know it was edible and packed a lot of food value.
And even though more repulsive than not, especially when watching it squirm and pulsate as it sensed it was in danger and began making lethargic moves to escape capture and consumption, there was something strangely appetizing about it, at a deep and primal level.
I didn't eat it, though, choosing instead to take it to another rotting tree already fallen and moss covered where I hope it lived on to transform into whatever kind of beetle it would be. Its old home became a couple of loads of firewood hauled downslope to the woodyard for splitting and stacking. And whenever I put a chunk of it into the stove that winter I wondered about the grub and what it might taste like lightly toasted over a blazing fire.
