Snakes, Deer and Frogs

My husband has met some new people while volunteering in various organizations while up North. One of the couples invited us, and another older couple, to their home for dinner last night. I had heard that this older couple were retired science teachers and very much naturalists as they have camped near the Arctic Circle for nearly two months.

I am very much a city girl having grown up in the Boston area and lived the past 28 years in a suburb of Washington DC. I believe that you go to the grocery store to buy your meat for dinner. This is just what I am familiar with. I learned that we were to eat venison that had just been shot by a neighbor the day before. Nothing against venison but I have never had it and of course, Bambi runs through my mind. All day I am dreading Bambi on my plate for dinner. Can I cut it up into small pieces and hid it under other things; can I even eat it?

We arrive at their house to find that in their living room resides their 20 foot long python snake. You heard me - 20 FEET LONG!!!!!! They bring here out, I had to pet it and then hold it as it is hissing at me. Then it poops on their carpeting and they give us a science lesson on snake poop.

I'm just not a snake girl, sad to say.

We got to their house early so we could watch their favorite movie, one that our son Jeff, who is a middle school science teacher, would love to show his students (or so they told us). I was rather doubtful but went along. The movie was called "Frog" and starred Shelley Duvall and Elliot Gould. It was okay but so dated as it was filmed in the mid 1980's and the girls had the big hair, station wagons for the family car (no mini-vans at that time), big aviator glasses (think Peter Marshall on the old Hollywood Squares).

Dinner followed with canned corn from last summer (very good), soggy Brussels Sprouts, couscous with Swiss Chard and .......BAMBI. I tried it and ate it. Not as bad as I thought it would be and my husband said that the host cooked it perfectly. I just needed to get over that I was eating a deer.

Conversation after dinner which was fine. We spoke about favorite movies and the hosts thought that the best movies were the East German movies (last time I remember East Germany was 1990) and those form China. I mentioned that I loved Sand Lot and Goonies, neither of which he had heard. Strange. Almost un-American. Unfortunately, I think we later bored the husband. He fell asleep at the dinner table. His wife said and did nothing and I can't believe that I am sitting there with a snake in the room, husband asleep, the bathroom in their bedroom is frigid because they don't heat the bedroom (the other guest guessed that it was 40 degrees). We were home by 9:00 PM.