You can tell right away that it’s barely edible, the look and the aroma being the first warning signs of the danger ahead, street posts on the road to hell, but you surmise from the fact that other folks are piling the stuff high upon their plates that it is probably expected of you as well and so you load up a pair of the questionable meat-tubes upon your own platter, with some trepidation, but also with the appreciative nods and conspiratorial winks of the assembled membership of the regional Rod & Gun Club, good folks all, but misguided in their promotion of the locally sourced and USDA-less, unregulated, ‘Game Dinner’.

And so, amidst the venison steak, fried squirrel, black bear stew and moose parmigiana, you eventually chow down the saucisse-castor as best you can and hope your guts don’t explode.  A night spent tossing and turning, cold-sweats and tremors, wracked by horrifying terrors populated with visions of those rodent filled, ink-black, links of damnation.  And in the morning you wake up drenched in sweat, clammy and unkempt, none the wiser for the experience, thankful only for the fact that life is fleeting and soon, hopefully, you’ll be dead.

Pay heed, my friend, and harken to these words – There is no joy in the beaver sausage.