 Why did I eat the squirrels? Well, ironically, the squirrels were eating the plant-based forms of protein that I was planting in my garden, the sunflowers and the peanuts. And in permaculture, there's a saying, and that is make your problem your solution. So the squirrels were my problem, so I made them my solution, my dinner. All right, so I wanna unpack this a little bit. How did this scenario happen? How did I end up eating the squirrels that were eating the food in my garden? Well, recently I embarked on a year-long mission to grow and forage 100% of my food for a year. So a year without grocery stores or restaurants, nothing packaged or processed, nothing shift long distances, literally everything that I would eat for the entire year I either had to grow in my gardens or forage in the wild. So that puts me in the garden and that puts the squirrels in the garden. I had to produce my flour, my calories, my sugars, my protein, my vegetables and fruits, literally everything, even the oil. And I was working on growing some plant-based forms of protein as well. I was really successful with my beans and peas, but I ran into a big problem with my sunflowers and my peanuts. And that problem was that the squirrels were eating them. Ironically, they were eating my plant-based form of protein. So in permaculture, the way of looking at the system is how can you turn the problem into the solution? The squirrels were a problem. How could I actually turn them into a solution? So that's when I decided that I would eat the squirrels. A lot of people in this scenario would just kill the pests who are a problem in their garden. But I'm not someone who just wastes resources or who looks at life as a pest in itself. Yes, these squirrels were posing a problem for me, but I still had great respect for the squirrels for the creatures that they are. So I wasn't going to just kill them in order for my garden to be able to produce peanuts and sunflowers. For me, this was actually about finding a valuable resource that there was in using that resource wisely. Now, squirrels are actually a sustainable source of meat. There was a huge abundance of squirrels in the environment that I was in, which was the city of Orlando, Florida. And so by harvesting these squirrels, it wasn't that I was taking from a resource that was not renewable and there wasn't already an abundance of it there. If that was the case, it's not something that I would have done. So this is a form of organic gardening. Some people would choose to use pesticides to kill things. So this was a sustainable local source of food right in my garden. And the reality is that even before they were eating my peanuts and sunflowers, I was already thinking about catching these squirrels and eating them. So it's not that I was forced to do this or that I had to, but it really motivated me to finally do it. So really the reason I was eating the squirrels is because they're a local source of protein, a local quality source of food. But at the same time, I was able to deal with a problem that I had in my garden and actually turn it into a solution, into a positive thing. All right, so here's the situation. I am no doubt under the crossfire for this. A lot of people will look at this whether they're vegans and they are against eating animals altogether or people who just like squirrels. They think they're really, really cuddly and cute and think that I shouldn't eat this while they're eating cows and pigs and chickens, for example. I am in the direct crossfire here because I'm sharing that I'm trapping and eating the squirrels. But the reality is that I've put myself out there, but the truth is that every single one of you watching this while animals are dying on your behalf, whether you're vegan or you eat meat, the death is happening. And I'll do another video where I go into that a little bit further, but if you're eating vegan and the food is coming from farms, animals are dying, whether it's mice and rats or birds or just the place being created where animals are being kept out, where an environment is being created that doesn't want animals to be there. The truth is what I'm saying is that death is happening for every single one of our meals, whether they have animals on the plate or not. I am happy to be under the crossfire, but I know that I will get a lot of comments for it. And this is about going into the truth of the food. And that was a big purpose of my year of growing and foraging all my food to really go into the depths and go into the food and look into those gray areas. And the more that I've looked into the gray areas, the more I realized that no labels, whether it's vegan or gluten-free or organic, no label is actually one that is cruelty-free and that is not causing destruction to people, to the planet and to other species. I eat the squirrels, it's obvious to see it, but we're all killing the squirrels or something like it in one way or another through our modernized lives. What I didn't eat, such as the fur and the skin, went right back to the land and actually fertilized my garden. So it was a closed-loop system. In fact, even the bait that I used to trap them was sweet potatoes from my garden using a metal trap. So zero waste whatsoever in a completely closed-loop system. So we're talking about sustainability here. Squirrels are also rodents, they reproduce a lot. So it is a sustainable source of food. Now, a big thing that people would ask or say is, is it, you know, would it be sustainable if everybody did it or not a question? Just say, if everybody did this, all the squirrels would be dead. Yes. So sustainability is about critical thinking and problem solving. If everybody in Orlando is eating the squirrels, then I wouldn't have been in that scenario in the first place. And if my neighborhood all wanted to eat squirrels, I would think about the situation differently. True sustainability is not about any direct set of rules. It's really about looking at individual circumstances and deciding what the sustainable thing to do in that scenario is. So that requires critical thinking. It requires problem solving. It requires not thinking in a black and white way. It really requires localized thinking and understanding our resources. All right, if you've gotten this far, you might be wondering, what does squirrel taste like? And recently I did a video for Buzzfeed that's been viewed over three million times. And the answer I give is just squirrel tastes like squirrel. And that's actually how I feel, but I'm gonna go into it a little bit more for you. It basically tastes not that different from rabbit or any wild bird or wild small game or chicken. You know, to me, most meats don't taste that different from each other, but it would basically taste like a combination of that. How did I cook it? Generally, I would just put it into stews, a vegetable stew with potatoes and cabbage and different greens and carrots and things like that. And just make a stew that it added a lot of flavor and a lot of consistency to that stew. Squirrels aren't very large, but they can really go a long way in adding to a meal. I wanna close by saying that this really isn't about the squirrel at all. This is about a bigger picture. Honestly, I wouldn't do a video that's really just about why I ate the squirrels if there wasn't a much bigger thing behind it. I went into that, but really the take-home lesson is that the world is not a black and white place. When you actually unlift the veil behind the food you're buying at the supermarket, you realize it is far more complex and far more intricate than that. When you look deeper at life, you realize that all of our actions are far more complex and deep than we think or would like to think. Labels are a false sense of security. When you really look, there's pros and there's cons to everything. So that's where I want to go. I want to go into the gray areas that really create critical thinking. And that is the purpose of talking about the squirrels and why I chose to eat them. And I hope that you got that. I hope that you see that intricacies of life. Now, if that is where you want to go in life, if you want to go further in down the path of sustainability and living a just and equal life, then this is definitely the channel for you. So make sure that you subscribe, like and comment and share this video to help get it out there. I love you all very much and I will see you again real soon.