Three Historical Figures I Admire (Who Were Completely Insane)

The Man Who Ate Noah’s Ark

Frank Buckland loved animals in the same way that one loves a dear family member. He also loved animals in the same way that people love Christmas dinner. A well-respected surgeon and naturalist, his obsession with animals, coupled with a stomach as strong as the side of the Kursk, meant that his appetite to devour God’s creatures had no reason to slow down. He ate a viper. He served his guests mice on buttered toast. At a feast he served kangaroo stew. Friends who called one day found him making a huge savoury pie, filled with chunks of rhinoceros. Apparently it tasted like very ancient, very strong beef. Scrumptious.

London Zoo provided him with some rare opportunities. Hearing that a prize panther had died he begged the curator to dig it up and send him some panther chops which, he confessed later, ‘were not very good’. I think there’s a lesson for us all there. However, a fire at the giraffe house some time later soon cheered him up as heaps of succulent roast giraffe were shipped to his door.

He obviously inherited his insatiable culinary weirdness from his father, Dr William Buckland, who was said to have sampled a portion of Louis XIV’s embalmed heart. Yeah I’m wondering why too. You can just imagine the group of eminent scientists gathered around the organ of a dead king, all silently wondering who was going to be the first to suggest they just eat the bloody thing. Buckland senior was that man. He reckoned that the worst thing he had ever tasted was a mole (probably from King Louis’ backside) but on reflection confessed to an even viler dish- stewed bluebottles. Schoolboy error. Everybody knows you mash bluebottles. Frank’s own pet aversion was earwigs. He complained they tasted terribly bitter. Also, despite days of boiling, his elephant trunk soup remained too tough to eat.

The Bucklands’ wish to experience the natural world with all their sense is an inspiration to us all in our sterile, bluetoothed world of hoverboards and food pills. Now if you don’t mind there’s a handful of wasps on my window sill just crying out for a cheeky splash of balsamic. Good day.