Only (especially?) in Michigan: Muskrat Meat on Fridays

Some of my fellow Michiganders are just plain wierd during Lent:

RIVERVIEW, Mich. (CNS) -- There's an alternative to fish for some Michigan Catholics abstaining from meat on Fridays in Lent -- muskrat.

The custom of eating muskrat on Ash Wednesday and Fridays in Lent apparently goes back to the early 1800s, the time of Father Gabriel Richard, an early missionary in Michigan whose flock included French-Canadian trappers. Legend has it that because trappers and their families were going hungry not eating flesh during Lent, he allowed them to eat muskrat, with the reasoning that the mammal lives in the water. [More...]

Happily this finely-written article strikes just the right tone for this kind of offbeat news piece, and so I'd recommend reading it even if you aren't an inhabitant of S.E. Michigan.

The question I'm confronting right now is whether or not I should try to hunt down a Muskrat dinner one of these remaining fridays in Lent, the article mentions a couple places I could go....

And no, I'm not kidding.