Anybody else find this usage inelegant or cumbersome? A too fast read puts the mind down to South America, yet the best substitute approximation I can come up with is " in the Southern US state of Louisiana." It is amusing yet odd that that after 244 years of existance, we, & the world, have yet to get a properly unique & specific identifier for residents of these United States of America.
Many Brits, ie. residents of the British Isles, use the colloquial term of 'Yanks' for us but saying 'the Southern Yank state' grates exceedingly and VERY pedantically, use of 'US' instead of 'USofA' could mean Mexico as its official name is "Estados Unidos Mexicanos" which translates as "United States of Mexico" in English. Also, for a reasonable period of their history, Brazil's full appellation was (English) "United States of Brazil".
Thanks to an Italian explorer and a German cartographer, the entire Western Hemisphere is America, subdivided into North, Central and South divisions, so is it that Canadians & Brazilians (etc.) aren't Americans? Where oh where is the felicitous term for us poor Unitedstatesians?
And yes, I am suffering from confinement and pedantic-ism is a symptom of the condition! Thus, this is your, alas poor reader, pain of the day. SMILE!
Vegetarian rodents are perfectly fine to eat. Urban rodents who eat garbage and live in filth, not so much.
There used to be a muskrat jubilee day in Delaware, in the general Dover-Smyrna area every fall. Around November IIRC.. There was a muskrat skinning contest, and stands all over the place with various local muskrat dishes for sale to be enjoyed. I never had any, but I’ve had alligator, and liked it.
I cannot say what muskrat tastes like BUT for certain Nutria (usually called RATS by Cajuns) is VERY good IF you know how to cook it.
When we lived in South LA & I worked for the security contractor at the refinery construction project in Marathon, we had a Cajun lady as an admin clerk, who fed us all manner of unlikely critters. ALL of her meals tasted GREAT.
(Our staff always said that LaDonna could make work boots taste good, with enough time, a brown roux, file & ladled over rice.)
NOTE: To avoid having to give everyone LONG breaks to drive into town for meals, we asked around & LaDonna volunteered that she & her 5 daughters would feed all of us all we could eat, for 1.50 per meal each.
Fwiw, it’s been my long experience that “city kitties” are “more than a little finicky” when it comes to unusual food BUT most of them, that I’ve met over the last 6+ decades, will eat raw oysters & raw fish, IF you call it a “fancy foreign name”.
Note: I once met & got to eat a meal that was prepared by Justin Wilson, the justly famous LA humorist. - IMO, he was an even better cook than a storyteller.
Yours, TMN78247