In beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz, the second noticeable item, right after shills hawking “lancha, lancha” are big white birds (Garzas, cattle egrets) hawking “krah krah”.
These former illegal immigrants from Africa first appeared in Veracruz in the late 1950’s, but since then, they have replaced many other locally nesting species. There are entire areas on the Catemaco Malecon painted white with bird dung, and most locals know to only cross these areas with umbrellas or large hats.
Occasionally an innocent tourist parks in some of these areas and returns to find his former red car to be converted into a Daliesque scheme of red and white blobs.
The government of Catemaco is obsessed with providing free boats, motors, fish stocks and other supports to more than 1000 registered fishermen around Laguna Catemaco starving for anything bigger than a gold fish.
Those white birds, that shit up and down the Catemaco Malecon are an excellent source of protein and should be considered part of the Catemaco diet. After all, Catemaco has eaten most of its wild life to extinction, and now glorifies monkey meat disguised as roast pork on most of its restaurant menus.
I am looking forward to eating Garza al Tachogobi, Garza frita, Garza a la Veracruzana, etc.
Abstract: The study assessed the proximate composition, mineral contents and in vitro digestibility of meat of cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis) found in the Federal College of Agriculture, Nigeria. It was scarified, defeathered, dissected, oven dried, ground and analyzed using standard methods. The life weight of the samples was 300±10.20 g. The sample contained 76.72% DM crude protein, 0.14% crude fibre and ash 6.41%. It had low level of crude fat (2.14%). The energy level was 365.46 Kcal. …… The nutritive composition of the sample compared with other sources of conventional protein and minerals. Based on these results, it is suggested that nutritional qualities of cattle egret should be harnessed.
