The comments here definitely represent the vagaries of the human condition! We Got All Kinds Here! It’s actually pretty typical for people to consider things idyllic before they are disabused of their fanciful notions. Sure sounds like every concept of Vermont living I know about. (Remoteness, off-grid, wood heat, et al) I have not sugared but it doesn’t surprise me customers don’t want to know How The Sausage(/Syrup) Is Made. Similarly no one wants to think about huge sewage lagoons and the most dangerous jobs people do cleaning out the pits in order to get their tasty tasty mega-ag / corporate bacon. We all hold these hypocrisies/contradictions (sometimes mitigated by eating locally/small-batch but still)

False dichotomies won’t help you! Even tho it has been a while since I scienced formally, does the dosage still makes the poison? “Danger” is relative (“potential danger” is still infuriatingly redundant) and we may never know the temperature or levels at which a rodent may decompose enough to be fatal right? Who wants to propose to UVM’s budding crop of food scientists that they study the issue? Will Big Maple get in the way? #ProctorGate!

The nature of what constitutes “gross” or “creepy” is a land-mine-riddled field. Is a cold freshly-dead rat in a sap bucket grosser than hair jewelry? How about “death masks” or “extreme embalming,” where bodies are posed? How about the ‘delicacy’ of casu martzu? Lutefisk, mummy dust tinctures? Lotsa gross out there. Some folks even allow their pets to lick and kiss them when the pets eats shit! All relative.