Twain's Feast (25 page)
Authors: Andrew Beahrs
Marguerite is tall and strawberry-haired, with a ready smile and an open, generous face—much more so than I’d expected, to be honest, even for someone whose notion of being “completely self-serving” includes dedicating thousands of hours to protecting a single shy species. When we spoke on the phone before the visit, Marguerite’s voice tightened as she talked about the problems terrapins face; she clipped her sentences angrily, and I pictured someone with sharp, maybe even aggressive features. Her anger peaked when talking about Rodney Lewis, a local man who made a short-lived attempt to farm terrapin a few years back.
“I’m not PETA,” Marguerite said. “And my issue isn’t with Rodney personally. It’s always easier to vilify one guy—I even called him after one article came out about his farm. It had quoted me, and I wanted to clear the air. But he should never have been given permission to do what he did—the permit was atrocious, absolutely outrageous. He was allowed to collect three thousand of every species! Diamondbacks, snappers, sliders, red-bellies. No investment at all on his part, just pulling animals from the wild and putting them in a shallow dugout on an old inland hog farm. Those thousands of eggs he says he found? No way. The turtles were gravid [carrying eggs] when he found them.
“The [Department of Natural Resources] had every chance to stop him; they
say
they care about the animals. The old terrapin pounds dealers used were these big brick tanks, usually close down to the water where they’d be cleansed by the tidal flow. They’d store their catch there for a while, before eventually packing them up and sending them off to hotels and restaurants. But what you had here was basically a cesspool with ridiculous turtle densities. Deer and geese were using it as a watering hole—no question it was a disease risk. The oversight just wasn’t there.”
say
they care about the animals. The old terrapin pounds dealers used were these big brick tanks, usually close down to the water where they’d be cleansed by the tidal flow. They’d store their catch there for a while, before eventually packing them up and sending them off to hotels and restaurants. But what you had here was basically a cesspool with ridiculous turtle densities. Deer and geese were using it as a watering hole—no question it was a disease risk. The oversight just wasn’t there.”
Eggs collected, we go to the hatchery: a small side room—almost a lean-to—warmed by Marguerite’s hot-water heater. Glass cages hold minuscule hatchlings (you could fit four in your palm) and larger, three-inch turtles, the latter ready to be passed on to local classrooms. It’s a humble successor to the old fenced terrapin pounds, which held hundreds of turtles and grew more valuable as the terrapin grew scarce. In 1902 the
Washington Post
observed that
Washington Post
observed that
one may commit murder, steal a horse, or run away with another man’s wife on the Eastern Shore and stand some chance of coming clear, but woe betide the hapless one who is caught poaching about the pounds, interfering with the eggs or taking terrapin out of season. For he is as certain of punishment as the sun is to rise. The pounds are jealously guarded night and day. . . . A pound full of diamondbacks is as good as a gold mine any day.
Marguerite’s head-starting project has its opponents. Among the watermen, of course (though they have less of a stake one way or the other now that harvesting terrapin has been banned—I left several messages at the Maryland Watermen’s Society office and never heard back), but also among state wildlife officials. She defends herself fiercely, though; she thinks that there’s too much bureaucratic territoriality, too many people wanting to study instead of move forward with genuine preservation efforts. When she’s accused of releasing turtles in the wrong places, mixing historically distinct populations, she scoffs: “Where are these pristine populations supposed to be? Hotels would release their extras, going way back. Just recently some Buddhists in New York let a bunch go in the wetlands there. It’s frustrating, like it’s more important to do a genetic study than to actually help the species survive.”
Marguerite started taking the protection of terrapin personally when eight of the animals she’d bought, tagged, and released turned up in a Chinese market in Albany.
13
“This was back when I was just getting started,” she says. “I didn’t even have my number on the tags. The only reason I heard about the turtles was that someone I’d recently met saw them and called to see if they might be mine. So I called the market and said, ‘Those are my animals. I paid for them, I expect them back.’ They started arguing, and I said ‘Look, it’s real simple. I have a bill of sale for the animals, and I’m claiming ownership. It’s no different than if my dog walked across state lines—it’s still my dog. I paid for these turtles. That’s how they’ve made their contribution to the economy, and now they’re mine.’ But it’s hard. There’s no gentleman’s agreement, no rules people are willing to follow. If someone wants to take tagged animals out of the wild, and out of my research, all I can say is shame on them.”
13
“This was back when I was just getting started,” she says. “I didn’t even have my number on the tags. The only reason I heard about the turtles was that someone I’d recently met saw them and called to see if they might be mine. So I called the market and said, ‘Those are my animals. I paid for them, I expect them back.’ They started arguing, and I said ‘Look, it’s real simple. I have a bill of sale for the animals, and I’m claiming ownership. It’s no different than if my dog walked across state lines—it’s still my dog. I paid for these turtles. That’s how they’ve made their contribution to the economy, and now they’re mine.’ But it’s hard. There’s no gentleman’s agreement, no rules people are willing to follow. If someone wants to take tagged animals out of the wild, and out of my research, all I can say is shame on them.”
Albany seems like one of the last places you’d look for live terrapin being sold as food; it’s like finding raw oysters at a hot-dog stand (or a good hot dog at a raw bar). But long-distance transport of terrapin is nothing new. When packed into well-aerated, straw-lined barrels, hibernating turtles can live for weeks or even months, long enough that in 1897 one Maryland woman could lay confident plans to send them to Italy’s Queen Margaret. And the sad truth is that the Chesapeake population was eventually hunted to near extinction, to the point that even restaurants in Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia—cities with easy access to the bay, the nation’s greatest natural incubator of turtles—usually served terrapin from hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Eventually the names of the various recipes were often the most local thing about them.
I’ve been talking about diamondback terrapin as if there’s only a single homogeneous species from Cape Cod all the way to Texas. But of course that’s not true; there are six distinct subspecies, defined by genetics or behavior or both. Admittedly, if you’re like me, the list of their individual characteristics (northern diamondbacks lack knobs on the median keel; the posterior margins of Carolina diamondback shells curl upward; the median keel of the ornate terrapin has bulbous knobs) can make your eyes glaze a bit. They seem sort of trifling, only worth the attention of serious turtle junkies.
But the differences matter. In Twain’s day terrapin eaters thought that they mattered a great deal—as much, certainly, as the difference between San Francisco’s coppery native oysters and the fat, delicious, doomed shellfish of Blue Point. The best-tasting, most expensive turtles were northern diamondbacks; among them, aficionados would call for Long Islands, Delawares, or, most commonly, Chesapeakes. In 1897 one reporter wrote that northern diamondbacks had the “only flesh known which one can crush in his mouth with his tongue without the aid of his teeth.” Since northern diamondbacks hibernate for longer than their southern cousins, he thought, their meat was naturally more tender and delicate. Whatever the reason, by 1894 northern diamondbacks from the Chesapeake commanded ninety dollars a dozen; turtles from farther south cost a buck apiece.
But Chesapeakes were becoming scarce. The official 1891 harvest was 89,000 pounds; by 1901 it had dropped to 1,583. To make up the difference, local dealers began shipping in terrapin from Texas and (even worse, gourmands believed) the Carolinas. Baltimore’s Hotel Rennert insisted that it bought only genuine Chesapeakes, and some other restaurants were honest about the source of their turtles. But given the scarcity of Chesapeakes and the lower price of Carolinas, there was every incentive in the world to lie.
Just as round pieces of skate wing will sometimes pass as sea scallops, the change from Chesapeakes to their less-desirable cousins often went unnoticed. But the introduction of freshwater turtles from Illinois was the final straw for one well-known Baltimore gourmet, who began insisting on seeing a live northern diamondback in the dining room before he’d order terrapin. Maybe others should have followed his example; the
Times
warned in 1888 that when the proprietor of a cheap restaurant served terrapin, he often served his patrons “with a delusion and a snare in the shape of red-legged turtles which come from the flats of New Jersey.” One local Maryland dealer said in 1898 that of the half million dollars spent by Baltimoreans on terrapin that year, no more than fifteen thousand went to buy genuine local Chesapeakes.
Times
warned in 1888 that when the proprietor of a cheap restaurant served terrapin, he often served his patrons “with a delusion and a snare in the shape of red-legged turtles which come from the flats of New Jersey.” One local Maryland dealer said in 1898 that of the half million dollars spent by Baltimoreans on terrapin that year, no more than fifteen thousand went to buy genuine local Chesapeakes.
Not everyone thought that was a problem. The same dealer, who was himself bringing in “golden diamond-backs” as a substitute for Chesapeakes, claimed that “there ain’t nobody in a hundred . . . what can tell the difference between these here goldens and the diamonds. There’s a lot of people with a barrel of money who think they know, but I know they don’t.” Not even purchasers from wealthy clubs had noticed that they were paying top dollar for Carolina terrapin. “If the real terrapin dies out,” the man went on, “he won’t be so badly missed. There are lots of others just as good, as far as the epicur[e] is concerned.” As long as there was
something
that could be sold to make Baltimore or Philadelphia terrapin soup, where it came from and where the original population had gone were both beside the point.
something
that could be sold to make Baltimore or Philadelphia terrapin soup, where it came from and where the original population had gone were both beside the point.
But a few years earlier, another dealer had been troubled by what he saw happening. It’s so rare to find someone speaking openly against his own wallet that I want to let him speak for himself:
I am constantly surprised . . . that no one has pointed out the alarming decrease in the choicest food products of this country. I remember very well that when Dr. Brooks of Johns Hopkins University used the extirpation of the buffalo on the Western plains to illustrate the diminution of the oyster supply along the Atlantic coast, everybody laughed as if it were a huge joke. . . . But we are living to see that it is the literal truth. At one time there were oysters in plenty all along the New-England coast, but the Pilgrim fathers and their descendants caught them so thoroughly that not an oyster can now be found north of Long Island Sound. In Long Island Sound they are very largely the result of transplantings from Maryland. On the Jersey coast and in the Delaware Bay the bottoms produce nothing like the quantities they used to yield. In the Chesapeake Bay, which has more natural oyster ground than all the rest of the world, the crop this year will not be 5,000,000 bushels, against 17,000,000 bushels twelve years ago. What is the result? The oyster is no longer the poor man’s food, and the prices will continue to increase. In Europe, oysters have gone up so that they are now cultivating mussels, because they can be sold cheaper.
And what else was at risk, a
Times
reporter asked him? “Canvasback ducks, red-head ducks, and the better kinds of game. All are increasing in price and decreasing in quantity. How will it all end? The buffalo was exterminated. Why not the oyster and the terrapin and the canvas-back duck and the other things that are worth living for?”
Times
reporter asked him? “Canvasback ducks, red-head ducks, and the better kinds of game. All are increasing in price and decreasing in quantity. How will it all end? The buffalo was exterminated. Why not the oyster and the terrapin and the canvas-back duck and the other things that are worth living for?”
Substituting one wild food for another is just one way of breaking the bonds between food and place, one step on the road from eating backyard chicken on Sunday to the KFC Double Down Sandwich (currently being test-marketed and consisting, as God is my witness, of bacon, two kinds of cheese, and special sauce between two fried chicken breasts). Wild foods have natural, undeniable
terroir.
Eating them is an opportunity—if one that’s too often missed—to think about a piece of the world: its tides, its winds, its land, its limits. But substitution does exactly the opposite. It creates an illusion of eternal plenty, blinding eaters to how their choices shape the world.
terroir.
Eating them is an opportunity—if one that’s too often missed—to think about a piece of the world: its tides, its winds, its land, its limits. But substitution does exactly the opposite. It creates an illusion of eternal plenty, blinding eaters to how their choices shape the world.
Genuine bluepoint oysters from native beds on the south shore of Long Island, for example, went extinct in the 1860s; even though he included them on his menu, it’s entirely possible that Twain never ate a native oyster from Blue Point. Dealers simply sold new varieties, seeded from Chesapeake stock, as the genuine article. But this did more than cheat an eater; it encouraged in him an almost childish belief that he could eat whatever he wanted, forever—that he could have everything, all the time. The evidence on the plate said that surely there were still massive reefs of oysters at Blue Point. And surely you could still have Chesapeake canvasback ducks, fattened on wild celery and rich with their own gravy; surely those weren’t mallards or redheads (only Delmonico’s, the
Times
claimed in 1888, was consistently honest about the replacement).
Times
claimed in 1888, was consistently honest about the replacement).
It’s a pattern that’s been repeated again and again; in her wonderful
Kitchen Literacy,
Ann Vileisis describes some of the many substitutions. Shad shipped from Florida masked diminished Connecticut River runs. Maine’s Kennebec River salmon gave way to fish from the Columbia, and later Alaska. Before prairie chickens were shipped from grasslands by the millions, the occasional specimen substituted for Long Island grouse. More recently, in California, failing to distinguish between subspecies of abalone (each of which grows to a different size, lives at a different depth, and reproduces at its own distinct rate) hid the fact that previous favorites had already been fished almost to extinction. The sudden collapse of the abalone fishery wasn’t actually as sharp as it appeared; instead, people were seeing the last collapse in a line of collapses, as one subspecies after another vanished.
Kitchen Literacy,
Ann Vileisis describes some of the many substitutions. Shad shipped from Florida masked diminished Connecticut River runs. Maine’s Kennebec River salmon gave way to fish from the Columbia, and later Alaska. Before prairie chickens were shipped from grasslands by the millions, the occasional specimen substituted for Long Island grouse. More recently, in California, failing to distinguish between subspecies of abalone (each of which grows to a different size, lives at a different depth, and reproduces at its own distinct rate) hid the fact that previous favorites had already been fished almost to extinction. The sudden collapse of the abalone fishery wasn’t actually as sharp as it appeared; instead, people were seeing the last collapse in a line of collapses, as one subspecies after another vanished.
Of course, eating wild food can be done right. Maine’s lobsters and Alaskan salmon are examples of wild seafood that thrive under intelligent management plans; both help make their homes places that are distinctively different. But when a wild food stops being a true feature of place—something that’s harvested locally, eaten locally, and, most important, understood locally—it’s in serious trouble. Eating wild foods has to mean respecting them, the land and water they come from, and their natural limits; most wild stocks simply can’t survive becoming long-distance novelties. When they do, they’re likely to vanish—and to prompt a new long-distance trade to fill the local gap. Then, instead of a great local tradition, you’re left with a fossilized habit like an Upper Midwest fish fry serving only Atlantic haddock, or a Maryland crab house serving crab cakes that begin with opening a Chinese can.
Terrapins were luckier than Maine salmon or black abalone; before overharvest could wipe them out entirely, Prohibition banned the sherry and wine always used in the most popular recipes. Not long after, the Depression led many wealthy Americans to cut back on the kitchen staffs formerly tasked with killing the turtles. Together the two events probably saved northern diamondbacks from extinction. The next major hunting threat would come from China, but even that ended in 2006 with a law banning intentional harvest. Today, though poaching remains an issue, the biggest problem is shoreline development. With fewer sandy beaches around the bay, paths and driveways make tempting spots for a terrapin eager to return to the water.
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