Things you really shouldn't put in your mouth

Marmot. Yep. Marmot. Large, furry rat like creatures. Actually a type of ground squirrel. Herodotus apparently claims that they collect gold dust in their burrows. He could be right.
I won't go into the exact details of how I came to consume what is apparently an endangered species, for obvious reasons.
I'd also like to reassure you all that stories of the black plague are much exaggerated. And that was raw marmot. I can assure you, what I ate was anything but raw!
Which leads us to the step by step guide for catching, cooking and consuming your marmot.
First you will need the right terrain - high, bare, rocky outcrops deep in the Mongolian steppe are best.
Then you will need an ancient, wooden rifle, with a stand made from what looks like two random sticks and a state of the art snipers sight. You'll also need a slightly over-excited semi nomadic horse herder to wield said weapon. No ladies need apply. In outback Mongolia hunting is men's work!
Once your herder returns with the marmot, the real fun begins.
Marmots are quite cute frolicking among the rocks. Their little paws and oversized bellies are still quite sweet, even when the head shot has categorically sent it over the rainbow bridge.
The next step is the tricky one...skinning the marmot. But this is not any old skinning...no...this involves removing the skin and all the flesh and leaving just the spinal cord, while keeping the skin completely whole - cute little paws and all.
If you are finding this hard to imagine, let me assure you, it was no easier to believe while watching!
Somewhere in the middle of the skinning comes the nasty process of removing the intestines. No creatures intestines smell good. At best they are greeney grey sausages of nasty. But something about that marmot diet of plant roots and gold dust means their intestines are particularly icky. So icky only the herder and I managed to stick around. Even the dog ran away whimpering. So did the other Mongolians.
Now, you should have a marmot bag, complete with most of the flesh. And a nasty looking bowl of marmot innards...heart, lungs, liver, kidneys ... other bits I didn't recognise but which should generally be on the inside not the outside.
While all this skinning and messing about with the slimy insides has been happening, the wise marmot chef will have already prepared a hot fire and filled it with rocks. The wise marmot chef will also have brought a tool for extracting said rocks once heated. I was not with wise chefs.
You see, the next part of the process involves shoving rocks glowing red from the fire into the recesses of the the de-skeletoned carcass. But my companions only had an ancient adjustable spanner -which didn't really adjust and two sticks they were trying to use like oversized chopsticks. In the near dark. As it began to rain.
At one point I think someone actually tried picking up the stones with their hands. This was a mistake. The process made even more complex because as well as trying to force red hot rocks into your marmot, you also have to stuff in the goopey remnants in the offal bowl. Everything except the liver...special treatment for that! At the same time you have to make sure not too much steam escapes, that you don't give yourself third degree burns and you don't lose any of the precious innards.
Finally, if all goes well, and despite a poor start and much agitated shouting in Mongolian it appeared to in my case, you should end up with something that looks very like a marmot. Minus the head of course. I suspect there are easier ways of sealing the neck than your driver spending half an hour in a tool box on the top of the van, to find a single piece of rusty wire. Nonetheless, it seemed to suffice.
But then you ask, is this enough? Will the hot rocks really cook the little critter from the inside out?
And of course the answer is no! There is yet another step in this process.
Using that ancient Mongolian tool, the butane blowtorch, the marmot carcass has to be thoroughly scorched and scraped. And I mean thoroughly. A solid forty five minutes of searing blowtorch action and scorched fur scraping went into the production of my first marmot. Burned marmot fur, if you are wondering, smells only slightly better than marmot intestine.
Of course while waiting for your marmot to be fully seared, there is another delicacy to whet your appetite. Marmot liver, wrapped in caul fat, shoved on a stick and barbecued in the open flames till the outside is as burned as the marmot carcass.
The surprise is that it's delicious. Try and forget everything you have seen, forget that it might have plague, forget burned protein causes cancer - and just focus on that liver cooked in its own animal fat.
But the main show is yet to come.
Once your herder has decided the marmot is toasted to perfection it gets opened up. Imagine a giant, swollen, seared balloon, complete with its own little paws and tail. Then imagine it sliced down the middle. Rather than deflate it opens up like a big, marmoty bowl. And in the bowl is the marmot juice. This you pour out into a shared bowl and pass round. And what does essence of marmot taste like? Well, to be honest, like marmite. Delicious, meaty, rich marmite. No wonder the little critters are endangered.
Finally, there's the contents of the marmot bag and then the bag itself. Those contents, seared, steamed, unidentified bits of marmot innards anyone? I passed on that. I also passed on grabbing the hot rocks out of the marmot for "a hot stone massage". Given the toughened outdoor men who had tried picking up rocks were now squealing and throwing these "massage tools" about I decided trying to treat serious burns in the wilderness was a step too far for my cultural immersion.
The actual marmot carcass gets cut up last, into large strips. It then you see that the inside of a marmot is mainly fat. Thick white chewy fat. Now I like a bit of bacon rind. Don't mind the skin off a chicken. Used to enjoy pork belly before I gave up the flesh of the pig. But marmot fat is a step too far for me. I politely nibbled some unidentified meat lumps off of a great strip of fat, and yes, they were tasty but by then I had more than enough marmot for one lifetime.
I am assured that actually your strips of marmot fat are best consumed two or three days later, when "softer". I am wondering if in the summer, with no refrigeration, "softer" might be a euphemism.
Of course I have forgotten, there is another gift your marmot carcass can give you - knuckle bones! Apparently the only other ones like them come from wolves. If you really want the full experience you need to digest your marmot while watching someone expert with a knife extract the tiny, perfect knuckle bones from seared marmot paws.