Looking for a squirrel to kill for lunch?

A few days on, the Christmas Eve leftovers were wearing pretty thin. And in self defense, I had to bag up all those cookies and stow them in the freezer. Out of sight is not exactly out of mind. I still know they're there. But they're not in my face - which makes it way to easy to stuff them in my face - every time I go into the kitchen. Which I tend to do more than usual when I know there are cookies in them thar hills.

Anyway, I nearly wept with gratitude when my brother took me out to lunch last Saturday, and I had enough of that delightfully non-Christmas Eve leftover to have a delightfully non-Christmas Eve dinner.

I'm more than happy to be back to my completely unimaginative but normal normal, eating-wise.

That unimaginative normal most decidedly doesn't include squirrel, even though they're so fat, slow and bold I could probably grab one in the Boston Common and shove it in my backpack before it realized that I wasn't one of those suckers who feed them.

So I probably wouldn't make a good dining companion for Maine's Daniel Vitalis "who was once a big influencer in the raw-food vegan movement and is angling to become an even bigger one in the modern hunter-gatherer movement."

The Boston Globe recently caught up with Vitalis when he was out hunter-gathering, "rifle in hand, looking for a squirrel to kill for lunch."

He told the reporter that they taste like chicken. Chikcen wing, to be specific.

Ah, thanks but no thanks. Way to rodent for me.

And I say that with full respect for a social media savant who, for 200 episdoes, authored the "ReWild Yourself" podcast, and now has a new initiative going: "a full-scale multimedia brand he has just launched called 'Wild Fed,'" which includes a podcast and an Internet television series."

I, of course, would not have been a candidate to rewild myself, given that I was never wild in my eating to begin with. The closest I've come to wilding is eating a fish that was caught by a fisherman I actually saw for myself - if not catching the fish, then selling the fish. This has happened in Maine, in the Greek Islands, in Ireland.

That and picking and eating wild blueberries and blackberries on occasion.

Food, [Vitalis] believes, is the most direct way to get people reconnected to their wild selves, something he believes people desperately need and want. And by zeroing in on food, Vitalis has an opportunity to continue thinking about a topic he has been in an ethical wrestling match with for most of his life.

I don't know about you, but I do enough walking around the city to have come to the realizatoin that there are plenty of people who have, in fact, "reconneced to their wild selves." And it's something that those folks most definitely don't need, however much they might want it.

A long-time vegan, Vitalis converted back to believing that humans need animal food. And rather than just head to the local supermarket, and pick up a plastic-wrapped package of meat, Vitalis went DIY. And he really went with it.

Now his home in Bridgton, in the lakes region of southern Maine, looks like a vegan’s nightmare. Everywhere you look, there are skulls and pelts and guns and rods, and the basement is filled with all sorts of tools for the modern predator, along with three deep freezers full of his kills, one each for deer, bear, and fish.

That's not just a vegan's nightmare, by the way. All those skulls and pelts, guns and rods... That's a me nightmare.

Nothing against meat, mind you. Just everything in moderation.

Vitalis clearly knows how to be a thoroughly modern hunter-gatherer. His new video series costs subscribers $49 per season.

For an additional $200, people can sign up for an interactive nine-week program that includes extended cuts of the show and live access to Vitalis through Q&As and forums.

He's an influencer on Insta, and has a vanity license plate: HNTGTHR. He understands that this all seems a bit weird, given that when people think hunter-gatherer, they're thinking primitive man or Big Foot.

“I get that,” he said. “But there needs to be somebody who gathers this into the modern world, and I care more about getting this message to soccer moms than I do about living in a teepee.”

I'm down with his decision not to live in a teepee in the Maine woods, but I can't see the average soccer mom going out hunting for squirrel.

On the squirrel hunt the Globe reporter went along for, Vitalis came up empty. Not to worry. He had some recently bagged squirrel back home in the freezer, and his wife whipped it up with some wild rice for a nutritious (I believe) and delicious (dubious) lunch.

Sure, it's good and honorable to take care of your own food needs, but most people live in cities, and it's just not feasible for us urban dwellers to grow, hunt, and gather what we put on the table. Even if half the city of Boston could probably survive for a week on the squirrels that live large on the Boston Garden and in the Public Garden.