Squirrel-Flavored Snacks Are Up for Election in the UK

What is it with the squirrel-munching? First the New York Times tells us that adorable, fluffy-tailed rodents are ending up in cooking pots and on dinner plates across the UK. And now Gawker reports that a leading potato chip manufacturer there has come up with new squirrel flavor for its so-called “crisps.”

Cajun Squirrel “flavour” is part of Walkers’s Do Us a Flavour campaign, in which crisp-eaters can vote for their favorite new flavor through May to see which one of six finalists stays on the shelf. The other five flavors in the running are fish and chips, onion bhaji, crispy duck and hoisin, chili and chocolate, and builder’s breakfast (beans, eggs, sausage, bacon).

But this last piece of news won’t come as so much of a surprise to anyone familiar with eccentric tastes in salted snacks on the far side of the pond. We’re talking about a nation where the most popular potato chip flavors include cheese’n’onion, lamb and mint, tomato ketchup, and even prawn cocktail (no, really). And other woodland creatures aren’t safe either, as this picture of Hedgehog crisps proves.

What’s next? Bambi tortillas? Toad pretzels? Roasted badger nuts? This sickness has to stop!