Making Yellow Bellied Marmots garden friendly.....

Rockchuck is never served with Ripple.

Rockchuck Stew

1 rockchuck
2 onions, sliced
1/2 cup celery, sliced
Flour
Vinegar and water
Salt and pepper
Cloves

Clean rockchuck; remove glands; cut into serving pieces. Soak overnight in a solution of equal parts of water and vinegar with addition of one sliced onion and a little salt. Drain, wash, and wipe. Parboil 20 minutes, drain, and cover with fresh boiling water. Add one sliced onion, celery, a few cloves, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook until tender; thicken gravy with flour.

Vodka is key to any Mongolian barbecue. It is consumed at every step so that by the time you get around to eating your marmot, the actual taste is not so much of an issue. And what does marmot taste like? One Web source says "beefy." "Like wild duck," insists another. Liars, we think. "It tastes like rodent," Lerner says.

So heat up some smooth round river rocks in your barbecue, and just follow these simple steps:

1) Go find some marmots. Each one will feed three to five people.

2) Behead the marmot.

3) You'll want vodka for this step. Reach your hand into the neck cavity and pull out the guts. Rub the inside with salt. Or what the hell ... paprika or cumin or curry or bay leaves, too.

4) When the rocks are glowing orange, drop them into your marmot, poking smaller rocks into the legs. Then seal up the neck.

5) Get a blowtorch, the kind you use to sweat pipes while soldering, and start burning the hair off your marmot. Yeah, you'll want vodka for this, too.

And there you have it! Marmots inflate as they cook - "It can get as big as a basketball with these four little legs sticking out," Lerner says, and might even explode right in your lap. Plus, the cooking time is a mystery. Considering the vodka Lerner consumed in the process, we won't ask her. The Web site e-Mongolia says 90 minutes, which seems long. So I guess you're on your own. You could poke your marmot "until the juices run clear," or get a meat thermometer if you're a pansy.

This is, after all, a meal of the Great Khan. Rrrrrr!

As soon as the marmot is done, whenever that is, open the neck and pour out the soup into cups. Ha, don't you wish now you had tossed in some onion and garlic and even carrots?

At your holiday table, dig out the hot, greasy rocks and pass them around first, Lerner says. Mongolians believe rubbing the hot grease on their hands and arms is good for the skin, and this step is a social emollient as well.

Cut up the marmot and pass it around.

Mr. Grossman and I had a good laugh about talk of road-kill stew on the COR thread. You guys had him scared off at one point. He still isn't sure if you guys were kidding or not. Lol.