It sounds like a good excuse for a piss up, 19,000 people downing 16,000 litres of ale.

Its the fifteenth annual wild-food festival at Hokitika, a small community perched on the West coast of the South Island of Aotearea.

But apart from the copious amounts of ale being consumed, there is something more sinister to the menu than traditional wild fare of boar, rabbit, hare or deer.

Wandering around the food stalls, I was unfortunate to have missed out on the magpie pie, the festivals winner for 2004, and sold out within an hour of the festival opening.

Other fare on offer, left me decidedly glad that I have a rather squeamish side to my gastronomic preferences.

One huge, hairy man, certainly of Scottish origin, splintered a wood pile of rotting pine and plucked out a wriggling white creature, a huhu grub.

For just three dollars this juicy grub was yours to consume. Said to taste like peanut butter, I watched in morbid fascination as (oddly enough) mostly children popped the things into their gobs and squealed with disgusted delight as they swallowed the thing.

This was bush tucker, Maori style.

Apart from the grubs and Magpie pies, other delights to tickle your fancy were seagull egg, pig tongues and hare's testicles.

Teetering precariously on a cocktail stick these little balls (cough) of dripping grease were being fought over as the number that were left declined.

Being the gallant man that I am, I forewent the experience and stood back to allow others access to these tasty morsels.

It had taken Alan Spencer, the owner of the hare testicle stall less than five hours to sell out his stock.

Of six hundred hare testicles.

I wondered briefly how long it had taken him to hunt half that many hares, and whether the breeding season of wild hares had been cut tragically short.

Bulls penises too had sold out.

Damn.

Foiled again.

I must remember to get up earlier next time, they say that the early bird catches the worm, in the case of the huhu grub, quite literally.

There was a new item on the menu this year.

Bull semen.

By lunchtime, 300 pumps worth of bull semen had been swallowed, mostly by men who'd heard of its effect on male virility.

There were few women queing up to drink semen, then again there rarely are.

Luckily enough, pint in hand, of beer that is, I wasn't particularly thirsty, so I forewent this pleasure also.

The final culinary delight that I spotted was a tank filled with crunchy Coruching Grasshoppers.

One dollar and you could stuff thie leaping insect into your craw and savour its woody texture.

Jars of Sandfly Sauce looked  less than tempting, besides I'd unwittingly eaten enough of them in the outback of Australia.

I have eaten some strange things, horse in Vienna, Guinea pigs in South America, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to sample these gourmet nibbles and juices.

For the first time in my life, I began to think that McDonalds weren't so bad after all.

Then I sobered up and realised that they're not called bollock burgers for nothing.

yechydda,