"As Mr. Chin and his friend carved up the bear in the first-floor kitchen [of the Cornell dorm], some of their peers were studying at nearby tables. Other students walked by and took pictures. 'Most people were really curious,” he said. 'Like, "Hey, we’d love to try some." We were just explaining, like, "Hey, none of this goes to waste,"' Mr. Chin said."
From
"Students Skinned a Bear in a Dorm. Cornell Realized It Should Ban That. After two Cornell University students skinned a black bear in a communal kitchen last year to make a meal, the school changed the rules" (NYT gift link).
From the comments: "Not the first time students and bears have resulted in a college needing to change its rules. Lord Byron famously kept a pet bear in his Cambridge dorm after he learned that pet dogs were not allowed."
Really?
I see that
Byron wrote this in a letter dated 1807: "I have got a new friend, the finest in the world, a tame bear." He is said to have walked it about on a chain.
Key evidence includes Byron’s letter of 26 October 1807 to Elizabeth Pigot: “I have got a new friend, the finest in the world, a tame bear. When I brought him here, they asked me what to do with him, and my reply was, ‘he should sit for a fellowship.’” The University of Cambridge and Trinity College itself reference the story as historical fact (or well-attested report), noting he is said to have acquired the bear (possibly at Stourbridge Fair) specifically because of the dog ban. He reportedly walked it on a chain, and the authorities could not easily prohibit it under the existing rules.
Key evidence includes Byron’s letter of 26 October 1807 to Elizabeth Pigot: “I have got a new friend, the finest in the world, a tame bear. When I brought him here, they asked me what to do with him, and my reply was, ‘he should sit for a fellowship.’” The University of Cambridge and Trinity College itself reference the story as historical fact (or well-attested report), noting he is said to have acquired the bear (possibly at Stourbridge Fair) specifically because of the dog ban. He reportedly walked it on a chain, and the authorities could not easily prohibit it under the existing rules.
संदेश
82 टिप्पणियां:
Ban, ban, ban, ban, ban.
So, they were hunters, and legally killed the bear. And then used the communal kitchen to skin it, and make pastrami out of it.
And the reaction is "Oh they killed a cute little bear". Except, we need to control the numbers of black bears, and hunting is the best way to do that.
Skinning just seems an emotional reaction. LIke when people are horrified that some criminals was "Shot 30 times", as if it matters. One bullet will kill you. How do people think that nice package of Chicken or Beef ends up at their local supermarket?
Having said all that, I don't think a college communal kitchen is the place for students to "skin bears". Who wants to see that? And who cleans up after them. I wouldn't want a dead bear in my kitchen.
BTW, my college didn't have communal kitchens. I don't think we even had a microwave. We were expected to eat at the cafeteria.
Let me be the first to get this one in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td67kYY9mdQ
What an interesting question. I tend to agree with Ocean about the "don't skin the bear in the communal kitchen" thing, since that level of meal preparation is a bridge too far for a lot of people (I've never watched an animal being skinned so I don't know if I'm among that number; in theory I'm fine with it). Plucking a chicken is also something I think many people might find upsetting, or at least kind of grody. So is the ban just on that sort of thing? If they'd just brought in the bear meat, as if wrapped by a butcher, would it still be ok? Because why does anyone have to know it's bear, if they don't think bear is food?
I myself don't think kombucha is food, but I wouldn't ban it from a communal kitchen as long as I wasn't forced to drink it.
Insert joke about Cornell/Brown Ivy League rivalry here.
…there’s precedent for stuff like this at Ivies. My aunt is fond of saying my uncle majored in duck hunting at Dartmouth. ‘tis a bit of a stretch but not much…
A bear weighing 120 - 200 lb? That's a kind of odd estimate. And I hope they dressed it elsewhere, before toting the carcass inside. Bears don't smell like roses.
I hope they saved some pastrami for Junior'.
…bear does not taste good…
Pastrami is cured beef. If they were curing bear meat to make a pastrami-style meat, they would have been monopolizing the space for a couple of weeks. It also isn't something that would be done with all of the meat.
I believe the men are bow hunters, if that matters.
I remember Grandpa Walton hankering for Bear Steak.
https://www.metv.com/stories/ralph-waite-nearly-quit-the-waltons-because-he-believed-he-had-to-fight-a-bear-in-an-early-episode
https://himtnjerky.com/bear-pastrami/?srsltid=AfmBOoo4yCMUngkg7Qs4_1eI4vLDgX08fxdJohZ_Pm-vZr4-ijgpCZAF
In a co-op at college chef duty rotated and my friend made chocolate bread.
gross.
Mr. Chin?
Chinese are very cruel towards animals. Generally speaking.
How did they kill the bear?
"Ms. Knewstub"
Karen Knewstub?
Karen knew Stub and Stub knew Karen.
There's more than one way to skin a cat.
Yet another example of stupid people ruling over the smart ones.
The viral outbreak of 2026 is believed to have stemmed from a Cornell dormitory wet market...
It's really not about the bear. Is it a good idea to use a dorm kitchen for this? - insert any animal. Cow, pig, elk..
I say no.
There's a scene in "Giants in the Earth" where the pioneers are disgusted that someone ate a bear. Like they considered it barbaric or a sin. Kind of like we would be about eating a horse or a cat or dog.
Humans use exotic animals for ego stroking and money. "Look - I have this exotic animal as a pet - how cool am i?"
Visit the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Colorado - and see what misery these poor animals face.
So much angst in the comments over there. We used to butcher game on the kitchen table. It seems these two students knew what they were doing. I guess Cornell just can't expose the rest of the students to the real world.
In the article, it says the bear was shot. I wonder where the students kept their rifles? It being New York, I am certain firearms are not allowed on campus property.
How do people think that nice package of Chicken or Beef ends up at their local supermarket?
Hopefully, it was processed at a USDA approved and inspected facility, not a communal kitchen in a dorm.
We used to butcher game on the kitchen table.
Which is why if you get game processed, all the packages will be stamped with "Not for Sale".
You can see a picture of the kitchen and carcass here, https://www.reddit.com/r/Cornell/comments/1nc1kaf/picture_of_ganedago_black_bear_cub_nsfw/#lightbox
I am not sure why this has percolated up into the gestalt, but maybe mixed metaphors aside, this news is missing something. A communal kitchen isn't exactly the right place to do this, and Cornell didn't really discipline them they just changed the rules, which is within their right. I don't see any problem with them banning people from processing wild game from the communal kitchens. It's not really a culture clash article, it's reasonable to want people to process wild game somewhere other than a shared kitchen.
So this news is missing something.
Perhaps there is a humanities and old english poetry tie in somewhere. Beowulf and all that.
Yuck.
Even my grandparents didn't prepare carcasses in the kitchen, and their kitchens were not communal in the sense that a college dorm's is. So, for example, on the farm the chickens were not plucked and rough-prepped in the kitchen itself in the house. (obviously, they dismembered whole chicken into pieces for frying in the kitchen; I've done that myself). Same thing with pigs and wild game.
This doesn't strike me as necessary, and I have no problem with it being banned.
Even at my paternal grandparents very, very, very rustic weekend property in Illinois, where hunting and fishing were just part of it and we ate what was caught, all the prep, including the fish cleaning, did not take place in the cabin kitchen itself. That took place either outside or in the small cleaning shed.
So, just no.
RC Cola said
" How do people think that nice package of Chicken or Beef ends up at their local supermarket?"
Apples and oranges. What does mass food processing of farm animals for sale in supermarkets have to do with this topic? Nothing. This is a dorm kitchen. Not a food processing facility. I'm surprised you didn't find a way to blame the Joooos.
On the maternal side, there was a designated area in a lean-to attached to one of the farm's barns.
These guys were thoughtless, by my lights.
rcommal - I agree.
If most people visited mass animal processing plants - they would turn vegetarian.
My mom was remarkably "un-squeamish," and she did attribute this to being raised on a farm. Raising and then killing and prepping animals was just part of it.
But she would not let my dad even clean fish inside the house itself.
What if
They called it ART PROJECT
or home work for class
Would a brown bear be less Diverse, more appetizing?
Ironically the dorm is called Ganedago Hall. The name, replete with Spinal Tap-style cedillas, is the Cayuga Indian term for the land Ezra Cornell stole to build the school. I am sure the Cayuga did their fair share of bear skinning on that very spot. CC, JSM
Shouldn't that be "Black bear pastrami?"
"Hey, we’d love to try some."
What, just slice off a piece for them?
Bears are full of parasites.
Having said that, the Reddit photo shows that kitchen to be fairly minimal - a fridge and oven/range about like you'd have in a single-family home. Not a lot of counter space - the boys seem to have improvised a butcher board out of a folding conference table and an Army poncho. Their offense is monopolizing communal space - kind of irrelevant whether it was bear butchery or Christmas cupcakes. CC, JSM
Perhaps Fauci can torture beagles in every leftwing university dorm kitchen.
It's for the common good.
Plus - I heart Fauci!
Lord Byron, a man of many tastes, may have had a different sort of Bear as his 'pet,' IYKWIMAITYD. CC, JSM
Black rock, black bear... The Diversity innuendo and liberal labels are interminable, indefinite, progressive.
I'd definitely be intrigued enough to taste it. That's more than I can say for tofu or sushi.
Cornish [black] bear. Brown when you can afford it. Never polar, which is privileged by virtue of Diversity (i.e. bloc ideology).
Planned parenthood, specifically cannibalism, was a thing in some Asian nations, including China. Never let a fetus go to waste is an extremely liberal attitude.
They should have at least separated the skin from the major muscles somewhere else.
Is it true that "bear does not taste good" (rehajm, 8:05am)? I've never tried it, but have it on good authority that it depends on what the bear has been eating. "You are what you eat", and bears that have been sitting in rapids in the Pacific Northwest snatching up migrating salmon and eating them have a nasty fishy flavor to their meat. Appalachian bears that have been feasting on fresh fruits and berries are (I'm told) delicious, though you have to cook them thoroughly because many of them carry trichinosis.
My authority for the second half of this is a high-school student I taught some years ago who shot her first deer in middle school and her first bear in high school, and ate (with the rest of her family) both of them. She lived way back in one of the hollers. When I teased her once about sending a truant officer to her house, since she'd been absent a couple of days, she said "Anybody comes to my house, my daddy'll shoot 'im . . . if the dogs don't git 'im first." Other teachers assured me that that was exaggerated, but not entirely false.
Finally, if anyone is inclined to mock rednecks, she spent her study hall doing the New York Times crossword puzzle.
FWIW, Rogan says bear is yummy, and he’s shot enough to know.
The bear I've eaten up in Maine at the primitive makers gathering potluck dinner on Saturday night was quite delicious. Americans used to admire this type of ingenuity. Now, everybody's crying about safety.
Aggie said...
A bear weighing 120 - 200 lb? That's a kind of odd estimate. And I hope they dressed it elsewhere, before toting the carcass inside. Bears don't smell like roses.
In the UP bear season coincided with my trip to fish for steelhead. The average size of the bears killed was 90 pounds.
Their initiative is laudable, their social awareness execrable.
doing the New York Times crossword puzzle...
In ink?!
Bear skin (hide and fur) is not edible. While bear meat underneath is edible when thoroughly cooked, the skin, thick fur, and heavy fat layer are processed for leather, taxidermy, or rendering rather than direct consumption.
Edibility and Safety Facts
Skin and Fur: Inedible; tough, covered in dense hair, and used for warmth, rugs, or leather goods.
Bear Meat: Edible and often savory, but it must always be cooked completely through to an internal temperature of at least 165°F (160°F with a 5-minute rest)
Cornell's student newspaper has an article with more information about the story.
"Following the hunt on Sept. 6, Chin and his partner intended to process the bear at a friend’s place when the friend had an “emergency to tend to” that led to the plans falling through, according to Chin. Not wanting to let the meat spoil, they headed to Ganędagǫ Hall’s communal kitchen for processing."
…it’s personal preference of course. I found it to be like much game meat- tough, devoid of interesting flavor beyond ‘gamey’. Stew meat…I do enjoy venison, love elk, hope to have a kudu steak again one day…
Black bear pastrami! Rookies! Central Arkansas Baptist College student (and future Presidential Candidate Huckabee) was cooking squirrels over a hot air popcorn popper in his dorm room. That was the only cooking device the college allowed. So what was a hungry college student to do? Go out, hunt down and skin squirrels, then roast 'em over the pop corn popper. When I first read that I knew Huckabee's campaign was doomed.
"Their initiative is laudable, their social awareness execrable."
I think this about sums it up, although the fact that the firm kitchen was Emergency Plan B casts a *slightly* different light on the matter. I wonder how many people live in this dorm (and if there is a way to ask them if a temporary closure of the kitchen would be ok), how many tend to use the kitchen, and whether it has door that can be closed and a sign out on it.
When Lord Byron came to Cambridge, he brought his valet, his mistress, and his fencing instructor. (Bear not included.)
#BlackBearDiner
James Beard called bear "one of the most delicious of game animals." I have a cookbook called Slow Food that has a recipe for Bear Stew for 4,000. It is the recipe that was used each year to make bear stew for the annual Bear Festival in McCleary, Washington. 200 pounds bear meat, 400 pounds beef chuck, 200 poinds carrots, peeled . . . .
Try teh honey bear. Absolutely delicious!
Dorm exploits. Reminds me of the University of Chicago students who built a functioning nuclear reactor in their dorm room in 1999 (for the annual Scavenger Hunt).
Howard preferred Maine bear over the last bear he ate in the Castro District.
Safety? No - It's just wholly inappropriate to use a dorm kitchen for large scale butchering.
"No more fun of any kind!!"
My otherwise intelligent roomate and his friend tried to make mead on our side porch (for a Renaissance Festival, the dorks). We heard an enormous explosion. Fermented honey covered the slatted glass windows, the cheap ridged panelling, the screens, the ceiling, the ceiling fans ... and every ant in Sarasota began an inexorable march to our house, including the red stinging ones. In August. In Florida.
One of them later became an astrophysist (roomate, not ant). They were both genius-level mathematicians. My old roomate's wife is a very, very patient woman. She looks and acts like a Vermeer. At least I knew a guy with a powerwasher.
It still didn't smell as bad as their next effort: to make stingray soup. They didn't bleed it out first. We're lucky nobody was killed by the mead explosion. We didn't have air conditioning and lived on that porch, and they borrowed all the still glass components from their labs, so they were obviously too fragile. Still, it was better than living in the hippy dorms, where they "made seitan" and tie-dyed everything that wasn't actively fleeing.
Butcher that bear in yo mamma's kitchen. See how she like it.
Maybe not as exciting, but they did cook up the pig that we had greased up for the greased pig competition. It was an annual event given for the benefit of the freshman women by our fraternity.
We had a couple good old boys (who eventually made good, running one of the largest drug distributors in the SE). They did each bring one of their shotguns to school. As pledges, they would yell “pull”, from the roof, and we would toss rocks up under the eves of the 3 story nursery school, causing the pigeons there to flee. Most successfully, but not all. Awhile later the police arrived, in response to complaints of gunfire. No one saw or heard anything, of course. And if the police had been diligent, they would have seen a string of the pigeons who didn’t survive, hanging from their window.
In any case, they had a hand with preparing the pig for dinner. It served whole, compete with eyes. Then one of them popped out an eye and ate it. The women at the table, all dressed up, freaked out. Hilarity ensued. Turns out the eyes had been replaced, since they don’t cook well.
There is a penumbra of liberal license where human rites are performed and Cornish black bears are reused, recycled, and reduced to sandwiches.
Smilin' Jack said...
FWIW, Rogan says bear is yummy, and he’s shot enough to know.
Ive had it smoked. It's a lot like ham.
I don't know where you get your deer processed, Freder, but mine comes in white butcher paper with the cut written on it.
Davey
Davey Crockett
King of the Cornell Kitchen.
Skinned himself a Bar,
When he was really twee.
Yeah, if Bear meat was so good, the recipe wouldn't call for 50 percent beef chuck.
One of my boys attended a UW branch that had a strong Natural Resources track. Their dorm had an armory for their rifles. I'm not sure they would be cool about dressing game there....I've field dressed and processed enough deer to know it is a messy and time consuming task. With left over "parts". Garage with the deer hanging from the rafters and something underneath to catch drips.
Yikes, makes me sound like a serial killer instead of someone who took up deer hunting in retirement.
Bruce: what a bad idea to attract women. I've roasted a few small pigs and one goat. Didn't have our non-Czech friends over until it was done. They scoffed at using the head. Cut off the pig heads to boil and cure into headcheese first. Which I will not eat. Tongue is disgusting to me. Were these guys expecting a date?
By the way, don't eat deer anymore. Sorry. The brain destroying prion disease has been discovered all over. No big loss. It tastes like bland chicken anyway. Just cull them.
Deer are just rats with antlers. CC, JSM
“Bruce: what a bad idea to attract women.”
Maybe. But the ones we were targeting were freshmen, and we were upperclassmen. This was an annual event, teams of women competed throughout the week. Final field competition was Saturday afternoon. And the banquet with the roasted pig that evening.
Each of the teams of girls had a sponsor - usually a sophomore. We paid for a beer bust one evening that week, which might be 30 guys and 30 innocent young lasses. By the end of the week, we had met most of the 250 or so freshman women. Before the rest of the guys had had had a chance to think about it. It worked. Several of us ended up with women we met there. A couple have made 50 years together.
Being invited to the banquet was, of course, an honor. So the freshmen women invited felt honored. And the rest of the women there were long term girlfriends who were used to it. So there was a little shrieking when the eye was eaten. But that died quickly with the congeniality.
I have a good friend who was an officer with the highway patrol before retirement. She now likes to hike deep into the everglades to kill wild pigs with a bow and arrow. She field dresses the carcass and hikes back to her truck with 40 pounds or more of fresh meat on her back. She is a very brave woman and the resultant pork is delicious. Field dressing is perhaps a more proper way of disposing a wild bear.
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