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rfmcdonaldI like cats and I like coffee, but this combination?
Asian Palm Civets, like the three dozen or so other members of the family Viverridae aren't true cats, although civets and cats do both belong to the suborder Feliformia. Unlike many other members of that suborder, however, the Asian Palm Civet doesn't seem to be endangered, spread across a large swathe of southeastern Asia and having adapted to urban life. Even if I'd never drink that coffee, that's something. At least the species has another way to motivate people to preserve it, apart from its harvested musk.
And its cuteness, of course.
Goad Sibayan went prospecting recently in the remote Philippine highlands here known as the Cordillera. He clambered up and then down a narrow, rocky footpath that snaked around some hills, paying no heed to coffins that, in keeping with a local funeral tradition, hung very conspicuously from the surrounding sheer cliffs.
Reaching a valley where coffee trees were growing abundantly, he scanned the undergrowth where he knew the animals would relax after picking the most delicious coffee cherries with their claws and feasting on them with their fangs. His eyes settled on a light, brownish clump atop a rock. He held it in his right palm and, gently slipping it into a little black pouch, whispered:
“Gold!”
Not quite. But Mr. Sibayan’s prize was the equivalent in the world of rarefied coffees: dung containing the world’s most expensive coffee beans.
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.
As connoisseurs in the United States, Europe and East Asia have discovered civet coffee in recent years, growing demand is fueling a gold rush in the Philippines and Indonesia, the countries with the largest civet populations. Harvesters are scouring forest floors in the Philippines, where civet coffee has emerged as a new business. In Indonesia, where the coffee has a long history, enterprising individuals are capturing civets and setting up minifarms, often in their backyards.
Asian Palm Civets, like the three dozen or so other members of the family Viverridae aren't true cats, although civets and cats do both belong to the suborder Feliformia. Unlike many other members of that suborder, however, the Asian Palm Civet doesn't seem to be endangered, spread across a large swathe of southeastern Asia and having adapted to urban life. Even if I'd never drink that coffee, that's something. At least the species has another way to motivate people to preserve it, apart from its harvested musk.
And its cuteness, of course.
