Dear Wally #96:
When is it ok to eat roadkill? It seems a waste to leave perfectly good meat right there on the road. Protein is protein, right?
-Anonymous.
Dear Anonymous: Well, yes I can certainly see why you might chose to obfuscate your identity on this one. Interesting question. Here’s the short answer: Never. It is never ok to eat roadkill. What else rattles around your brain? And are times really that tough? For all the solicited (and unsolicited) advice I’ve deployed hither and yon, this one question has never landed at my feet. Maybe I mean, I’ve never hit this one question with my fender and left it twitching on the yellow lines. I guess it was just a matter of time… This is upstate living after all and a lot of critters are unsuccessful in their quest for the sweet other side, especially the squirrels that do that fake start and then undulate like they are on Dancing With The Stars. That ‘thunk thunk’ always sucks. For us AND them. (In Darwinian terms, all the spazzy, indecisive, equivocating squirrels out there are taken out of the game before they can pass that bad decision making gene down. It’s sad, but you sneak a peek in the rear view mirror, smack the dash, dish out a choice expletive for their squandered life, crank up the Van Halen and keep rocking on! The DOT actually has a truck that drives around picking up carcasses and animal parts. Keep that in mind next time you complain about your job. Anyway, it’s hard not to at least think a little about roadkill up here where fresh and not so fresh meat (and fur, guts, horns and hooves) is abundant. Lot of nature.
I’ve met a couple folks who have no problem picking up a mangled deer, hefting it in their trunks and bringing it straight home to the kitchen to be butchered by something a little less blunt than a Chevy. Sometimes they’ll complete the summer meal by going off road and ‘hitting’ some sweet corn from the local roadside cornfield.
I’m not trying to be judgmental- it’s just that eating roadkill is not anywhere in my own operator’s handbook. But neither, for that matter, is actually eating meat that comes from a supermarket. But like you implied, what’s the difference? Protein is protein.
So here’s my updated answer, in 2 parts. I thought about when I personally might eat roadkill, say versus when you/one might eat it. I would have to have crashed a small Cessna in the remote stretches of Alaska, a few hundred miles from anything. Having finished the emergency Snickers bar that was stashed behind the pilot’s seat, having eaten the goo under my fingernails, having maybe even eaten the pilot, having trudged through the dense coniferous forest and brambly undergrowth, and having just out run Bigfoot (if that’s even possible), I’d have to have gone at least a full week without food (including undigested berries from bear scat). THEN I’d consider eating road kill. But even then, I’d have to be on a really remote logging road and have the one trucker a month cruise by and smack down something right in front of my eyes and then throw out of his window a bottle of Jack Daniels BBQ sauce at the exact instant he passed (What’s the chance of that?). But, if all of those variables convened, and I was blind with hunger, OK, I’d consider eating fresh roadkill. Doubt it would stay down, but I’d try. Never say never, right?
That’s just me.
For you, because from your very question it seems like the criteria for roadkill-eating might be considerably less stringent, I’d offer a few rules of thumb:
Eat nothing that you have driven by (or over) for more than 2 consecutive days. You want your meat tenderized, sure, but not by other people’s tires.
Eat nothing for which you must battle flies, maggots, buzzards or bear.
Eat nothing with quills or gills (beware roadkill fish- your meal will not end well).
Eat nothing that resembles a skunk (unless your Cessna crashes and you haven’t eaten in 3 weeks. In that case, enjoy!).
Eat nothing the collecting of which might put you in the position of becoming roadkill yourself. In other words, this isn’t the meal to linger over.
Don’t EVER try to make an anniversary or birthday dish from this source.
Eat no domestic animals. That’s just too gross and I shouldn’t have to mention it in the first place.
Bear in mind that possums, frustratingly slow movers and about as ugly as they come, tend to get cut down in twos, (how sweet!?) so chances are you can hit one on your way to work, hit its mourning friend on your way home and feed the entire extended family that night.
The social taboo of eating things like squirrel is quite high in these parts so you’ll want to be discrete with your snatching lest you subject yourself to unnecessary public humiliation and become social roadkill yourself. People WILL talk. For most, the modern world is just not so accepting. Yet. You can keep hoping for social reform.
My friend Paul has no problem with roadkill (hey, it’s free!) and what’s more, starts licking his chops at the notion of sautéed squirrel.. (Is there enough BBQ sauce to make that not nasty? I seriously doubt it. I also seriously tend to avoid his BBQ invitations.) So, technically, there are others out there doing it.
Well I hope I’ve given you something to chew on ( that wont make you sick).
Good luck and keep your reflective yellow safety vest handy.
-Wally
Ps: One nice thing about roadkill in the winter months is that is comes pre-salted.
Got a question for our advice columnist or just want to tell him the grossest thing you have run over and then eaten? Email him at cwn4@aol.com
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