Man eats road kills

[Grrrrrr]

In answer to NatureLover's question: why do we need meat when cows etc don't. Most of those animals have much more efficient processes for digesting plant matter than we do. Meat is a higher value substance that we have evolved to utilise. I suppose the flip side is why do big cats, polar bears etc live almost exclusively off meat? That said, if you get plenty of variation then you don't really need meat in these days of plentiful year round supply. On the other hand, it does taste nice - each to their ecological niche!

[Adanvdo Waya]

Originally Posted by Kayleigh

Road kill is put to some use..It is eaten by carrion..

I mean, the hide and such can be used for leather, the gones for tools, and so on.

God Bless,
Joshua

[No.9 Spider]

I seem to remember a discussion a couple of weeks ago on Radio 2 regarding roadkill. A caller mentioned a Road Kill Diner in America somewhere who would cook anything you ran down on the road (I would assume excepting people). Their slogan was apparently "from your grille to our grill"! Nice.

No.9 Spider

[The Black Rabbit]

Originally Posted by Adanvdo Waya

I mean, the hide and such can be used for leather, the bones for tools, and so on.

God Bless,
Joshua

Ugga ugga.
Me want squirrel bones for new axe.
Me make fire.
Kill annnimaaaal.
Cook meat!

Doug

[stripee]

Birds of prey, crows and others make road kills their dinner too. I think you need to know which parts not to eat, like the green wobbly bit and how to get the skin off etc. As many animals have parasites like worms and diseases it's possibly risky from the health angle.
A long time ago I used to collect skulls, so if I found a dead animal I would bury it for a while, then when the bones were clean, boil the skull up with hydrogen peroxide (this was when I was an art student) Then I would have a beautiful skull to draw....

I

[WildJanet]

Originally Posted by The Black Rabbit

Sorry to shock or sadden you Janet!!!
MAFF wasn't gonna fry up the badgers with a nice berry sauce or anything, it was carrying out research into bagers and bovine tuberculosis, using road kill bagders as test subjects...

Doug

It was a bit of both. I can understand why some folks can eat road kill but realy couldn't do it myself....& taking them away for annalasis is a good thing for the animals Future,but not my cup of tea; or Dinner I should say.. Am not against it; it's just not for me.....

[Queen bee]

I saw the advert for that one quite a lot. I don't have anything against it--waste not want not (there's a badger he can have down here) but I wouldn't eat dogs killed on the road. I mean, the owners could be looking for it and if you take it off the road, they're never going to know what happened to it.

[Dutchess]

Agree with Queen Bee on this, regarding pets. I also baulked when he said he picked up dogs and cats to eat. People sometimes search for months and months on end for evidence of a beloved pet which may have having died somewhere without their knowledge. Plus, in my mind it is theft. No-one would seriously steal my cat so blatantly if it was still alive () - so why should it be different because it's dead? It's still my cat!

As for cats being classed as wild animals (a long way back in this thread somewhere someone mentioned it I believe - it's been a while since I have been able to log-on, so apologies if I've got it wrong) .... No, I think this is a fallacy dating back to the days when dogs had to have a licence and cats didn't. Dogs that were knocked down had to be reported because they were licensed, but not cats because they weren't! It was as simple as that, I believe?

Anyway, the dog licence was abolished some years back now (I remember when it was 37p!) so I am not sure how the law stands on this nowadays - but I really ought to make it my business to find out, as I am a motorist as well as a pet owner! Anyone else know?

Cheers.

D.

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by The Black Rabbit

I used to collect dead badgers, Dutchess, for MAFF, some time ago, in my late teens.
I was walking along a road once, in the middle of the night, with a dead badger in a sack, slung over my shoulder, taking it home, so the ministry could collect it in the morning.

A panda car pulled up, and two coppers got out.
Trouble, I thought.

On asked me what I was doing and where I was going.
I said "I'm walking down the road, and I'm going home".

I think they thought I was being flippant or something, and so t'other one asked what I had in the bag.
I said "A badger".
Wide-eyed, they asked me if they could see inside the bag, to make sure I was telling the truth, and it wasn't a burgled television set or something...

When I popped the bag down, and opened it up, they shone their torches onto brock, and just stood there, looking at each other.
I told them "If you're going to ask me in a moment why I am walking down a road at 2am, with a badger over my shoulder, I'll give you the answer now if you like" (and then told them about how I was assisting MAFF).

The two speechless coppers got back into their car and drove away pretty quickly.
I don't think they can have been long in the job, or come across many people carrying badgers around at night before...
That said, that was, like I mentioned, some time ago, and I doubt whether I'd be allowed to do similar today...

Luckily for me, our neighbours knew exactly what was going on if they saw a sack on the front lawn, every so often... and a van come and collect it mysteriously the next day!
(Neighbours spoke to each other then).

Doug

i can sympathise doug - i sometimes collect badgers for autopsy / evidence in conjunction with the local badger group and wlo (checking out putative roadkill if it appears to be baited victims in disguise)

anyway not too long ago i got pulled over by the bill and had some serious talking to do to explain the five badgers in the boot

[Dutchess]

The man was macabre. I'm all for "waste not want not" and when the opening scene of him picking up a recently road-killed badger, still floppy and intact was shown, I was prepared to go along with what he was doing....My opinion changed however when I saw the overflowing freezer full of many (surely inedible) rotting carcasses. The bones hanging around his shed and the fact that he felt proud of himself for not digging up his wife's pet cat sent eerie feelings this way...anyone else studied the fascination many killers (esp. serial killers) have with disecting animal's bodies?) Then, towards the end of the programme, we saw shots of him picking up dead animals that had obviously been decaying for quite a while....

Fair enough if he was intested in anatomy, but why go under the guise/disguise (if it was a disguise) of salvaging the meat for food? The man could never consume the amount he stored.

So he was an ex civil-servant, eh? So am I!!!

D.