Our tour guide reassured us that the rice rats we were about to sample were of the highest quality. These were not filthy city rats who ate leftover scraps in dark alleys but their country cousins who feasted only on the organic insects and snails that thrived in the lush rice paddies. Tour members would have probably found them a bit more appetizing had their heads and tails been lobbed off first. Curiously though, I was not put off by the long naked tails or burnout eyes. As a Filipino, I had already eaten my share of strange proteins. Deep-fried day-old chicks anyone? I found the rats well-seasoned but a tad on the dry side.
What I did find remarkable was the other creatures that the rice farmers had found while cutting down the rice stalks in the fields.
