View from the North 40: Lenten muskrat, anyone?

While the Catholic Church gets bashed frequently for its outdated church-sanctioned laws and pressured to modernize its ways, I’m here to lend some non-church support for one of those canons which started in the Detroit-area in the 1700s: muskrats on the menu for Lent.

Yes, in the 1700s the missionary priests in the Detroit area allowed Catholic parishioners to eat muskrat “on days of abstinence, including Fridays of Lent,” the Archdiocese of Detroit told The Associated Press in April.

And they actually do it.

Yes, muskrat Fridays is a thing.

Edward Peters, an expert on canon law at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit said missionary priests “realized that food was especially scarce in the region by the time Lent came around and did not want to burden Catholics unreasonably by denying them one of the few readily available sources of nutrition — however unappetizing it might be for most folks.”

The Rev. Tim Laboe grew up in an area of Michigan where the practice has long been a tradition and recalls sitting down for muskrat dinners with his grandfather.

For real.

He told the AP that people say it tastes like duck, but he thinks it tastes just like muskrat.

I get it that the missionaries of old were worried about the welfare of the people living along the Detroit River who were poor and on the verge of malnutrition, and I guess we have to assume that there weren’t enough fish to eat.

But why muskrat? Were they standing along the river one day lamenting the lack of fish swimming along and went, “Well, it’s a rodent, for sure, but it is swimming … right, Bob?”

“Yup, Frank, I think it’s close enough to count.”

Except, why stop at muskrat? Why not beaver? Or otter? OK, otter are a different, non-rodent creature, but were beaver just so much worse tasting that they’re inedible? Did it have to be a water creature?

Mongolians eat marmot. They catch them; tub skin them; clean out the entrails, retaining the tasty organs; chop up the carcass; put it all back into the hide casement; tie the holes shut; and put the whole thing on a bed of embers to stew. When the hide casement pops a new hole like a pressure cooker venting, it’s done cooking.

I saw it on Travel Channel once. The travel guy from the U.K. was creeped out by the meat because he was told that people still get bubonic plague from marmots — a couple died from Mongolian marmot bubonic plague just this week, in fact.

You could see, though, by the way he was hanging around when they prepared the carcass, but choking on the meat that no one told him the plague doesn’t come from the meat, it comes from the fleas on the hide.

I learned that in 10th-grade world history.

Fortunately, I don’t think muskrats have fleas, and they must be edible, y’know, in the way that rehydrated, lye-soaked lutefisk is called edible, because it’s still a traditional lenten meal in the Detroit Archdiocese.

I know, Lent is over — believe me, if I had known about this a month ago, I would’ve been there to provide guidance and hope to all my Catholic friends and readers — but now they have something to look forward to next year.

The good news is that they have a whole year to push for recognition of the canon in areas outside the Detroit Archdiocese and plan their main course centerpiece: Pan-fried? Barbecued? Roasted? Skin-encased pressure cooked? Sautéed? Seasoned? With a light communion wine-reduction sauce?

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Faced with the choice of lutefisk or muskrat, which would you choose at [email protected].