Uh, hello. Our food has rat feces. What's a little bug or two?

Whenever someone mentions eating something unconventional, it's always described as a "delicacy" in some foreign country.

Happens every time, without fail.

We've been eating sea arthropods forever. I don't understand why people are squeamish about land arthropods.

@3: Speak for yourself. Those things give me the heebee jeebies.

I've eaten ant eggs in Thai soup, and adult bees, fried to a crisp along with their larvae and pupae in China. They were pretty good. For some reason, these things weren't overtly squicky (and I think I'd be fine with any sort of insect egg), but I'm not at all sure I could manage the larvae or pupae of anything that wasn't a bee. It's completely irrational, but for some reason or other my mind sees to categorise bees as something different from all other kinds of insect.

I heard a radio documentary once about a guy dining with tribespeople in the Amazon, where they served up the innards of a very large birdeating spider. He said it was "like a particularly foul scrambled egg".

I remember Oaxacan chapulines being super-tasty, but the fatter ones tend to explode oozily in your mouth.

@3 We usually don't eat them whole though. I'd be much more willing to eat spider meat than to just bite into one. Its the same reason I don't head down to the beach and just start popping crabs in my mouth.

@2 Indeed. As opposed to the shit we eat because its what we have.

The fried chili crickets I've eaten were basically spicy cardboard, rather boring. But the spice was a nice contrast to the mezcal being served.

I made Ant Granola one time, when I found our large container of honey had become a tomb to a significant number of ants. Easy to eat.

And yes to @3; the shrimp, crab, lobster... Bugs of the Sea. It's a start on the western bug-eating front. Plus, they are salty and delicious, I'm not sure what land-arthropods native to the PNW would be plentiful enough to collect and eat.

@7, people often eat shrimp whole.. sure, without the carapace, but they will often peel shrimp themselves, pull off the legs, and go gangbusters. Same diff.

Escargot, anyone? Pretty good with garlic and butter.

Six legged critters just shouldn't be eaten. Nothing good can come from it. It just mad. Mad, I say!