Manchurian Scorpion, to be precise. Tastes quite like a very salty
pistachio with a hint of fish on the finish. I had a couple of them, then chased
them with a handful of crickets roasted in honey mustard.
Today was
Bug Festival at the
Virginia Museum of Natural History
in
Martinsville. Since I had to attend to Mum this weekend anyway, Ms.
Brugger agreed to accompany me that we might attend the Bug Festival, among
other festive thingummies. Last night, we left Greensboro and headed to the
Third Bay for dinner
with our friends
Stephen and
Samaire Provost, who had moved to
Martinsville from California several months ago. As always, the food, drink, and
company made for a better-than-pleasant evening. Quite by happenstance, at the
restaurant, we ran into geocaching friend
VAVAPAM (a.k.a.
Pam),
whom I had earlier introduced to Stephen because he was writing a book about the
history of department stores, and Pam's family used to own
Globman's Department Store in uptown Martinsville. Globman's was a bona
fide fixture in town for most of a century, and it's nice to see it getting
coverage in Stephen's upcoming book.
After dinner, Ms. B. and I had a number of errands to run, which kept us out
later than we expected. Still, since it was such a beautiful — almost chilly —
evening, once we retired to Mum's, we sat out on the back deck with a bottle of
good wine until the morning's wee hours.
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Ben R. Williams, the museum's
Science Administrator-cum-bug-
server extraordinaire
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This morning, we scrounged up a tasty breakfast at
Daily Grind
uptown, where I have, on occasion, made an unpleasant racket on my guitar. No
noise today, just coffee and a really good (and huge) bacon, egg, & cheese
croissant. Then to the museum for the Bug Fest. We found a decent crowd (it got
much more crowded later) and a passel o' bugs. Everything from tarantulas
to crayfish to walking stick insects to to vinegaroons to giant mantises to
hissing Madagascar cockroaches (I used to co-habitate with Madagascar
cockroaches in Chicago, courtesy my roommate
Bill). And then the
pièce de résistance, the "
Eat a Bug" challenge. My friend
Ben R. Williams, formerly a reporter for the
Martinsville Bulletin, now Science Administrator at the museum, manned the food corner, with
plentiful supplies of Manchurian scorpions, water beetles, and crickets.
So, have a look back the beginning of this blog entry. Yummy bugs. They probably
won't move to the top of my dietary staples, but I didn't find them at all
objectionable. Ben did warn me that the water beetle was anything but
appetizing, so that's the only one I didn't try. Some other time, perhaps.
Following the festival, I did maintenance on a few of my nearby geocaches. Then
we had to hit to road for
Reidsville, to meet friends
Suntigres (a.k.a.
Bridget) and
BigG7777 (a.k.a.
Gerry) for lunch at
The Celtic Fringe. The bugs hadn't spoiled my appetite, though — both Bridget and I availed
ourselves to their
Welsh Dragon Burger, which comes adorned with
Carolina Reaper Pepper sauce. That is hot, hot, HOT stuff, I can tell
you. It's the best burger in the world. Bridget and I laughed. We cried. We
cried A LOT. And I brought some of that sauce home so I can cry all over again.
Scorpion stings ain't got nothing on this hot stuff.
We concluded our outing by visiting the
Patrick-Watson graveyard, which
is a tiny little boneyard in the remote woods between Greensboro and Reidsville.
I had already found the geocache there, but Gerry & Bridget still needed it.
They made short work of the cache, and we spent some pleasant time out there
among the dead. Brugger made some rubbings of the old gravestones (which date
back to the late 18th/early 19th centuries).
Despite the allure of the grave sites, we left no man (or woman) behind, and
back home we came. It's already been a busy and satisfying weekend, and there is
more geocaching on the docket for tomorrow. Till then, be goot!
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Three geocachers and one muggle at The Celtic Fringe in
Reidsville
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Suntigres watching out for the Walking Dead on her
approach to the cache
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Ms. B. making rubbings on one of the old gravestones
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Yeah, they're dead, they're all messed up.
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