ABSTRACT
Little care is taken in dressing game, which is done either by men or women. Animals with hair, such as monkeys and peccaries, are first singed whole in the fire, and the burned hair is then scraped off with the fingernails or with a small section of a midrib of a motacu palm leaf. The animal is then gutted with a sharp piece of bamboo, after which the whole carcass is sometimes (but by no means always) perfunctorily washed before it is cooked. Birds are hastily plucked and then singed in the fire and gutted. If an animal is small it is usually cooked whole, but if it is too large for a pot (or too large to roast rapidly) it is quartered or cut up into smaller pieces with a bamboo knife. Armoured animals like the armadillo and tortoise are usually thrown in the fire and left there to roast in their shells. Fish are never gutted before they are cooked, nor are the scales removed.
