How to catch, peel, grill and eat snakes

Sometimes my train of thought gets derailed, as it did today. I was browsing through the list of winners of the National Council on Public History's Public History Project Award recipients and bookmarking those sites on Delicious.  While perusing Delicious, I started checking out who else had found these projects of interest. Eventually, I  found my way to the digital exhibit A is for Animals - a project of the Australian War Memorial.

I both fascinated and repelled by what I saw and read. The site, which was designed primarily with a young audience in mind, features photographs, videos and audio recordings that illustrate the varied roles of animals in war, from essential means of transport, to beloved mascots to troublesome pests.

The video of a RAAF jungle survival training camp in Queensland made me a bit squeamish. The black and white film shows a collection of soldiers, catching, cooking and rather reluctantly nibbling a very large snake.  That video is below.

This collection is a long way from what I originally started writing about - The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project. More on that tomorrow (hopefully).