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For British guinea pigs, the most traumatic experience is being shipped from one eight-year-old's house to another and passed around the entire class. In Peru, life is a bit more difficult.
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A poor, harmless, stinky little creature is the guinea pig. Content to snuffle around, fart a bit and then go back to sleep, it does not ask much from the world.
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How cruel it is, therefore, that throughout Peru and in parts of Ecuador, this little beast is considered to be quite the delicacy. Cuy, as it is known, is served up in two forms. You can have a whole one, or half of one. When I say whole, I mean whole. We are talking head, hands, ears and whiskers. From the expression on the unfortunate animal's face when it arrives on the table, you can practically tell what it was thinking when it went to join the choir invisible.
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Yes, I ate a guinea pig. Well, I ate as much of the thing as I could manage to extract from a complex system of bones. I can report that, unlike most other exotic meats, it does not taste like chicken - but it's not much more interesting. I think this, coupled with the fact that for such a podgy beast there is surprisingly little eatin' to be had from a guinea pig, has kept the furry fellows off the plate and in the classroom throughout the West.
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