Woman still enjoys making squirrel gravy

On a rainy Tuesday morning, Lanie Sutherland cooked up a big brunch with sausage and biscuits and homemade preserves. She brewed coffee. She served sweet potatoes.
And, oh, yes!  She dished out some squirrel gravy, too.

“People used to fix sweet potatoes and put the squirrel gravy on it,“ said Sutherland, who grew up on Sandy Ridge, near Duty, in Dickenson County, Va.

The 63-year-old Sutherland comes from a large clan. She’s one of nine children.

“And, when we was growing up, we had squirrel gravy just about every day,“ she said.

You might say that made little Lanie a squirrel girl.

Sutherland giggled.

Not everyone likes squirrel meat, she said. “Most people don’t like it. A lot of people don’t,“ Sutherland said.

The gray-haired woman smiled. “People would eat it more – if they didn’t know what it was,“ she figured. “It tastes pretty good to me.“

Sutherland makes this traditional mountain meal every few weeks – or at least whenever her sons bag a couple of squirrels. Then, too, there is Sutherland’s annual gravy day. On the second Saturday of each October, Sutherland throws a big bash.

She sets up tables in the garage and outside on her deck. Next, she serves as many as 135 people – some are friends, and the rest are just other people, all making their way to her house near Buffalo Pond, in rural Washington County, Va.

“It’s like a friend of a friend and so on,“ she said. “And as long as we’re able to do it, we’ll probably continue.“

All come to sample Sutherland’s squirrel gravy. “It’s not as thick as sausage gravy,“ Sutherland said. “It has a different taste.“

Make that ... gamy.

“A lot of people won’t eat ’em because they think they look too much like a rat,“ said Sutherland’s husband, Norman, 68.

Well, do they?

“I don’t think they do,“ Norman added, matter-of-factly.

Like Lanie, Norman Sutherland grew up eating squirrels. He hunted them, too, along Fryingpan Creek, near Haysi, Va. Married for 46 years, the Sutherlands spent part of the late 1960s living in an apartment in Richmond, Va.

And, still, these down-to-earth folks did not move away from their squirrel suppers.

“I can remember sitting on the kitchen floor of the apartment ... cleaning squirrels,“ Lanie Sutherland said, giggling.

Lanie cooks each squirrel in boiling water. Then, she makes the gravy with cornstarch, milk – and squirrel meat.

Just not on Thanksgiving. That’s turkey day. And, then, “I usually just make gravy out of the turkey drippings.“

Could you use squirrel gravy for Thanksgiving?

“It would work,“ Lanie Sutherland said with a smile. “It’s gravy, just like brown gravy or any kind of gravy that you use.“

Now, wait a minute.

“I don’t like turkey myself,“ Norman Sutherland said.

Come Thanksgiving, well, Norman said he would prefer eating some squirrels.

“I would, myself,“ he said. “But nobody else would.“