For lunch today, I had a special treat: wild Nicoyan tree chicken. The meat and eggs of the tree chicken are a local delicacy, prized because hunting them can be such risky business. While docile by nature, a tree chicken fights for its life when caught — clawing, biting and thrashing its powerful tail, studded with sharp spines.
Wait a sec… killer chickens with razor sharp scales? It’s not the start of a bad horror flick, it’s Costa Rica’s favorite “other white meat” — iguana. For centuries, Latin Americans from Mexico to Brazil have delighted in gobbling up the giant green and brown lizards, said to provide health benefits ranging from surefire cold cure to some kind of four-legged, cold-blooded, fish-eyed aphrodisiac. The practice of iguana eating dates as far back as the ancient Maya, whose archeological remains show they too had a taste for chicken of the tree, as it’s locally known. Children and old folks are particularly encouraged to indulge in iguana; the reptile’s ability to regenerate body parts lost in accident or attack has fostered its reputation as a natural energy booster.
While I can’t prove or disprove the legends of the lizard lovers, according to my research, there’s logic to their claims. Naturally lean, with the lowest fat content of all meats excluding certain seafood, iguana is an exceptional protein source. In the wild, iguanas are folivores — leaf eaters. Compared to farm-raised meats, the meat of wild-foraging animals is richer in essential fatty acids, vitamins and minerals, and also preservative, hormone and antibiotic-free.
Iguana eating has some tempting environmental and economic side-benefits as well. Requiring close to zero attention, iguanas yield over five times the amount of meat per acre as cattle, while living on 30 percent less than chickens need to eat. And as compared to other grazing livestock, which turn fertile forests into barren dustbowls, iguanas thrive in peaceful coexistence with the natural environment, making them possibly the world’s most environmentally friendly animal food source.
But most importantly, how do they taste? I have to say, when I came face to face with my first plate of marinated lizard parts, my stomach did a little flip. As long as you didn’t look too closely, it might have been chicken. So repeating the word chicken in my head like a mantra, (and doing my best to ignore the lattice work of teeny tiny vertebrae, a dead reptile giveaway) I hesitantly took my first bite. The meat was chewy, gamey, and alarmingly close to the bone. It wasn’t awful. But it most definitely was NOT chicken. There was no mistaking that prehistoric tang.
Knowing how far the lodge staff had gone to secure the meal for me, I determined to soldier on. By the time I finished I had even come around to iguana eating --- not so much that I’m going to wake up with any midnight cravings, but enough that I’d be open to trying it again. But now that I’m walking around the lodge, trying to ignore the reproachful glances from lizards of all shapes and sizes that are scuttling back and forth at my feet, I think chicken of the tree would be much tastier in a less obviously reptilian form — like a patty, or perhaps a nugget? Tree chicken tacos, anyone?
