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The Song Challenge:   Let's Have Another Cup of Cat Cra . . . uh, Coffee   – Well, it seems that the coffee market is being undermined by runaway planting in Vietnam and Indonesia, flooding the market with cheap coffee.  Meanwhile, consumption has been relatively flat.  A Starbucks on every corner doesn't mean people are drinking more coffee; thus, the proliferation of gourmet offerings as customers' tastes continuing to get more rarefied.  One coffee retailer in Atlanta sells something called "luwak" coffee, which it claims is picked by the common palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphrodites), often described as catlike, but probably better thought of as an Asian version of a raccoon, coati or kinkajou.  The palm civet is also known as the 'toddy cat,' for its fondness for the palm juice that is tapped to make a sweet liquor.  On coffee plantations, palm civets dine heavily on coffee cherries.  However, they digest only the outer pulp of fruit, passing the coffee beans unharmed through their digestive systems.  And because palm civets repeatedly deposit their droppings in piles at the same spots, the coffee beans are easily collected, roasted then brewed into kopi luwak--civet coffee.  Kopi luwak is reputedly the best of all coffees because palm civets pluck and eat only the most perfectly ripe cherries!  The price of a pound of kopi luwak coffee?  $300.00.  Whether the beans are affected as they go through the animal's gut is also unknown. For that matter, there is some debate about whether coffee called kopi luwak was ever anywhere near a palm civet.  Asked how he knew the beans were really collected from civet scats, one coffee company representative said, "We operate on trust."  As for the taste, he described the brew as "gamey".   One dealer described the same scene being repeated every time he tells someone about luwak coffee:  "At some point in the story, when you explain how this cat eats only the perfectly ripe coffee cherries, the listener gets this cautious look on his face, and says, "Are you telling me that..." and the dealer always nods and says, "Yes, that's exactly right. Roasted cat-shit for $300 a pound."


Shitting Coffee Beans by Dharmabum
(Sung to Bringing In The Sheaves)

Coffee from Columbia
Coffee from Brazil
It all ends up at Starbucks
And I've had my fill
Now there's something new
It's the best I've ever seen
Tastes a little gamey
But they tell me it's caffine.

(Chorus)
Shitting coffee beans
Shitting coffee beans
We will make a fortune
Shitting coffee beans,
Shitting coffee beans
Shitting coffee beans
We will make a fortune
Shitting coffee beans.

Some folks drink their Coke
Some folks drink their tea
Since I found Kopi Luwak
It's cat poo poo for me
The flavor it is tops
All others are beneath
I pour it down my gullet
And I strain it through my teeth.

(Chorus)

All I drink is Kopi Luwak
It's the best I've ever found
Though it's a little pricey
At three hundred bucks a pound
But the flavor can't be beat
And it gets me really wound
Drinking Civet Droppings
Picked up off the ground.

(Chorus)

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