Does your coffee taste like… dung? There may be a reason. From New York Times comes this news:

Costing hundreds of dollars a pound, these beans are found in the droppings of the civet, a nocturnal, furry, long-tailed catlike animal that prowls Southeast Asia’s coffee-growing lands for the tastiest, ripest coffee cherries. The civet eventually excretes the hard, indigestible innards of the fruit — essentially, incipient coffee beans — though only after they have been fermented in the animal’s stomach acids and enzymes to produce a brew described as smooth, chocolaty and devoid of any bitter aftertaste.

A few thoughts come to mind:

• I would love to meet the person who first saw what looked like coffee beans in a pile of animal dung and decided to use them to make a drink. Just to ask, “What were you thinking?”
• No, I mean really. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?
• There’s no way a woman would have done it first. It had to be a guy. Most likely in his late teens or early twenties. Of this I am certain.
• On second thought, that’s not the guy I want to meet. The guy I want to meet is the person who decided that this is a product he could sell. Just to ask, “How did you arrive at a price?”

And for those in my readership, a question: Have you ever tried this stuff? If, say, Starbucks carried it, would you order a grande?

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