You'll eat it in Vietnam

Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" episode two nights ago was from Vietnam (probably a rerun), and in it, one of the Vietnamese Central Committee members takes Tony into the previously forbidden hills to tour the countryside.

They stop along the way and the committee member has to convince a local restaurauteur to open her shop and feed them. She agrees, but what she is serving is some kind of woodland creature for which no one seems to know the American word.

The committee member, who speaks very good English, says the cook will be preparing "squeasel."

The fuck is squeasel? It is weasel? Weasel that's been squeezed? Maybe weasel that's been squeezed to death by a boa constrictor. I dunno, but I can't wait to find out.

Bourdain wants to know, too, and he's willing to eat it, even after he sees the cook chopping it up and cannot identify it by sight. It looks nothing like any kind of meat you, I or Bourdain have/has ever seen.

It looks disgusting.

Well, raw meat isn't one of the world's prettiest sights, anyway. Probably why Michelangelo never sculpted it, DaVinci never painted it and Dante never wrote poetry about it. It's just meat.

But squeasel? That's a whole different kind of ugly. Even cooked, it looks nast.

Long story sort of short, it turns out squeasel is porcupine.

But from here on out, "squeasel" is going to be the word for anything that cannot be immediately identified and looks suspect.

It's my new favorite word.