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It’ll take weeks and a couple hundred dollars for the butcher to turn our carcass into something palatable. As a substitute, I’m reduced to a few frozen sausages, remnants of a boar hunted a month ago, that Brock has broken out of the freezer. It’s a disappointing reality, but it’s all I have to work with. It may not be my boar, but boar meat is boar meat. We get a fire going on a shabby grill in front of the house, and pile on the sausages as the body of the boar from today’s hunt, still in its white bag, hangs in the background. We crack open a few beers, put our feet up, and finally relax. I mull over the day’s events in my head and take myself through our journey once again, from spotting my prey in the distance to hoisting it up on that tree. Cleaned up and out of my camouflage jumpsuit, I still don’t feel the return yet to the city boy that I came here as. I’ve just killed an animal, and now, indirectly, I’m going to eat it. By this time the smell of our meal has permeated the air and our sausages are now seared and plump. Without hesitation, I dive into one with my knife and fork as it erupts with a surge of juice and bits of melted provolone cheese. The taste, salty and not unlike a pork chop, is elemental. I savor each bite with a warrior-like feeling of conquest, enjoying the fruits of my accomplishment. As I’m eating, I have to remind myself that what I am chewing at this moment is what’s hanging on that tree beside me. I am not eating just a sausage, as I may have only considered it to be in the past, but an animal. There’s something rather savage and reductive about it. It’s a visceral thing to kill another creature, watch it die, and then eat its body. Most people never consider this when they grill on their George Foreman. And with that, I wipe my mouth and go for another bite.
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| UCI | School of Humanities | Literary Journalism |