heritage ‘elephants’ graveyard’ if you like.
In the case of this American version there are a number of shops and
houses of different ages and styles, in addition to a church and school. As at
the Black Country Museum the buildings are bought to life by staff in period
dress demonstrating various crafts. For example, we saw one half of a
cooking demo - fortunately the good half meaning we got to sample some
freshly made French toast. It was during this presentation that we also found
out that the animal we had seen outside was a nutria-rat, introduced to the
area for its fur. Like mink the creature broke out of captivity and bred like
crazy, driving out a number of native breeds, and then proved to have a
poorly selling pelt. The demonstrator then added that people were attempting
to market nutria-rat meat in Europe as a restaurant delicacy, under the name
of water-rabbit (you have been warned). This news led to a chorus of 'Yuk’
from those of us watching the demonstration. 'No, it will be OK,’ the Cook
protested, adding: ‘anything is OK if it is deep-fried' (and demonstrating by her
vast physique how vigorously she had tested this statement). We never tried
the 'rat', at least not intentionally, but neither did these comments convert us
to a fat free diet.
In fact our next act was to buy a 'pig's ear' from the shop next to the
demonstration kitchen. We were assured that no pigs were harmed during the
preparation of this dish, which was actually a deep-fried tortilla thing with
sugar and pecans that sort of resembled a pig’s ear. Nevertheless, and
having already washed down a hefty Waffle House lunch with several pieces
of French Toast, we decided to eat the 'ear' later.