People Actually Eat Raccoons on Thanksgiving Day?

Personally, I would never eat a raccoon because their diet is trash. Literally.

Do people actually eat trash pandas?

As we approach Thanksgiving Day many of us are scrambling and hurrying to the stores before they close to get essential Thanksgiving Day foods. There are so many traditional dishes that we've become accustomed to and we associate with the holiday like mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, ham, gravy pumpkin pie and of course the turkey. The turkey should be the star of the show on Thanksgiving Day but I was  recently shocked to discover that might not be the case in some houses.

There's a rumor that people eat raccoons.

Is this really a thing?. I'm not sure how common this practice is but according to The Ringer, a raccoon dinner almost made it all the way to the executive branch of our government as President Calvin Coolidge was supposedly gifted a live raccoon to eat instead of a turkey for Thanksgiving one year. The story is that Coolidge couldn't bring himself to eat it so he actually made it his pet. He even named the raccoon.

As weird as eating a raccoon seems to us now it was actually quite common back in the day. According to Smithsonian Magazine, eating small game was extremely common up until about 50 years ago especially when people hunted and trapped their own food.

Are people still eating raccoons today? They must be because there are several recipes posted online.

Some cooking experts have compared the taste of raccoon to dark meat from a chicken.

If you tell me that something tastes like chicken I will most likely just have chicken.