Originally posted by the Bear:
let's start tonight's with a hilarious story.. from China,
where else? 
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[b]Chinese trucking live rats to southern
restaurants
July 16, 2007 - 3:42PM
Live rats are being trucked from central China, suffering a plague
of a reported two billion rodents displaced by a flooded lake, to
the south of the of country to end up in restaurant dishes, Chinese
media reported.
"Recently there have been a lot of rats ... Guangzhou people are
rich and like to eat exotic things, so business is very good," the
China News Service quoted a vendor as saying, referring to the
capital of Guangdong province.
Some vendors had asked people from a village in Hunan province,
near Dongting Lake, to sell them live rats, the Beijing News said
today.
"The buyers offered 6 yuan for a kilo, but as to where they will
sell the rats, they would not say," the newspaper quoted a local
resident as saying, adding that villagers had to catch the rats
live.
"If we want to do that, there is no problem. We could catch 150
kilos of rats in one night .. .but we will not do this against our
conscience," the villager was quoted as saying.
Some Guangdong restaurants were promoting "rat banquets", charging
136 yuan (A$20.7) for one kg of rat meat, the newspaper said.
Local governments in Hunan have been grappling with the rats, which
had already destroyed 1.6 million hectares of crops and could
spread disease, according to media reports.
A lack of snakes, also a popular dish in the south, and owls, a
traditional Chinese medicine, was held partly responsible.
Chinese media reported last week that some Internet users from
Guangdong had offered rat recipes as a way to deal with the
problem.
Scientists have also blamed China's massive Three Gorges Dam
project and climate change for the Hunan rodents' flight to dry
land.
(source: Sydney Morning Herald)
[/b]
omg they eat rats?
