Venomous snakes? Sure. Fatal scorpions? OK. Dangerous ruffed grouse? Possibly?
Apparently, well over a century back, among the most popular video game birds in the U.S. was killing people. To be clear, the bird wasnt really killing people. People who ate the bird passed away.
The majority of the poisonings were documented in the 1700 and 1800s, without any accounts reported in the U.S. given that 1886, according to an extensive– and interesting– evaluation of all ruffed grouse poisonings assembled by the University of California, Davis.
The prevailing theory at the time were that some ruffed grouse consumed in late winter had eaten sheep laurel, their flesh absorbed the toxin, and humans were then poisoned from the tainted meat.
Other theories posited that the meat was just tainted in birds which were killed and kept entire for well over a week before being sold (whole birds appeared plumper at market and food safety should not have been much of an issue).
After a rash of poisonings in Britain from imported birds, one Londoner thought in a paper that the container ship had been “defiled by poisonous preservatives by uneven carriers, because knavery was an instilled Yankee trait.”.
Other theories stated that those who didnt fall ill were conserved by wine or other alcohol at supper, deteriorating the toxin.
Whatever it was, by the turn of the 20th century, poisonings seemed to be a distant memory. The UC Davis paper speculates the change might have been a limitation on searching ruffed grouse in late winter season, though it may well have been something else altogether.
” The evidence suggests that in spite of the periodic poisonous catastrophe, Americans of the era related to ruffed grouse usage as no greater than an acceptable form of “cooking live roulette,” and accepted the risk as incidental or small, given the typical gustatory benefit, much the method that 20th and 21st century Japanese gastronomes have enjoyed their puffer-fish,” the paper states.
And to this day, even the National Library of Medicine consists of the North American ruffed grouse in a paper going over poisonous birds.
A ruffed grouse. © Bill Silliker Jr./ TNC
Ruffed grouse
Harmful ruffed grouse? Apparently, well over a century back, one of the most popular video game birds in the U.S. was killing individuals. To be clear, the bird wasnt really killing people. Individuals who ate the bird passed away.
