Last night, Kate invited me over to have caribou roast with her, and she said her would get out her bucket of seal oil and seal meat for me to try. So I head over. John wasn't there, just Kate, Carter and Edward, and Wilsa's son Michael. She opens up the bucket and there are all kinds of things floating around in oil. Pink things, black things, white things - stuff that looked like I would never dream of eating. She shows me the different kinds of seal meat (which is black). She had dried, partially dried, and cooked meat. She decided to have me try the cooked kind. Her boys call the dried kind the "hard" kind and the cooked "soft". Carter was excited and wanted some soft too. So Kate puts some on a plate and chops it up with her ulu. She puts several tiny pieces on my plate. Kate told me that if I needed to spit it out she wouldn't be offended. So, I told the boys it was my first time eating it and they should watch. I put a piece in my mouth. Not so pleasant. I thought the consistency would bother me, but that wasn't it, actually. It was very, very fishy. I don't like fish, so it wasn't a good thing. I kept chewing, and I really wanted to swallow, but I just couldn't. I felt bad, but I got up and spit it out in a paper towel. Next Kate gave me a piece of something white-ish/pink-ish/gray-ish. I asked her what it was and she just smiled - never a good sign. She said that it is her favorite part of the seal, and that her boys like it too. So I tried it. It was harder, and more difficult to chew, and it was still really fishy. I spit it out again. Since I was done having it in my mouth, I asked Kate again what it was - seal intestine. Lovely. Kate thinks that it was the seal oil that I didn't like, not necessarily the meat. She said that the oil is the really fishy part. So, if I have opportunity to have seal meat that hasn't been soaking in seal oil, I am willing to try again.
As we were sitting there, I asked where John was. Kate thought that he was fishing or something - he just takes off sometimes. We were talking about all the different things that you can hunt and such. Carter loves to tell me that his dad has got a wolverine before, and we were talking about caribou and lots of other things.
Not five minutes later, in walks John. I asked him if he got anything, to which he responded "I got hot, I got cold, I got stuck." Then he walked back outside. We weren't paying much attention as John walked back in with a box, and set it on the floor. I turned around, and noticed that something furry was sticking out of the box. Sure enough, John had came home with a wolverine!!! He had it in a white garbage bag, and then the bag in a box. The head had broke the bag and was sticking out the bottom. It had really pointy teeth!!! I was squealing, Kate was calling everyone, and the boys were excited. So John took it out of the box and laid it on the floor. I wanted to touch it, but I was nervous!! Carter was nervous to, but finally did it, so I did too. They we played a game. I told Carter to touch a part of the wolverine, he touched it, then I touched it. So we touched its back, head, ears, teeth, claws and nose. It was really exciting. I took a bunch of pictures with Kate's camera. I'll eventually get them from her and put them on Facebook. I was wearing an OSU shirt, so it was a great time for me to get my picture taken with a dead wolverine. Take that, Michigan!!
PS) I didn't even know that is what a wolverine looked like.
Pretty soon I will be Eskimo. The 6th grade girls already refer to me as "the Eskimo who needs a tan".
(Photo added 1/23/10)
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