Chef Jeff

I don’t know why, but at the bird feed section of Wal-Mart I seem to find myself in conversations with men… I guess that is a man thing, stand around and talk about different methods of bird feeding.

Today, I was standing in front of the bird feeders studying. A man in his late 20s stood and begin studying too. He asked me was I looking for something squirrel proof. If so, he said, he bought one at Home Depot that the bar in front, once something as heavy as a squirrel sits on it, it collapses down, which of course would dump the squirrel. He said it works great.

I said, no actually I didn’t want to have any kind of feed, like sunflower seed or corn that squirrels like because I our new dog grabbed a squirrel the other day and at least yanked his tail off, so I don’t want to encourage squirrels to hang out in our yard.

He said this area of Georgia squirrels have no natural enemies so they have become too plentiful. He said my dog might have done the humane thing to have killed and ate a squirrel. Well, that is one way to look at it.

Then he said the squirrels from where he is from has plenty of natural enemies – up in the mountains of North Carolina. I told him most of my genealogy research goes through his home area. We discussed a couple of counties in western North Carolina that we both knew. He told me his father bought a 100 acres of land on the Nanahala River in Macon County, Ga., and his father recently died and now it is his.

Somehow we got talking about cooking. We talked about Cajun cooking. He loves the food prepared by the brothers at the Cajun Butcher Company not far from my house. We both were salivating talking about their tasteful turduking.

He told me was a chef at a private club. He said he has a culinary degree from Western North Carolina University. He gave me his business card and said, “I’m a good old boy.”
A good old boy?

His name is Jeff. Chef Jeff.