"Roadkill is excellent food if you get it right away."

I was just now reading a kids' book (Pocket Guide to the Outdoors) when I came across this surprising passage:

"Roadkill is excellent food if you get it right away. Check with your local conservation department for rules about collecting roadkill. A deer is a prize. Rabbits or squirrels can be excellent."

Ever wonder what a hedgehog tastes like?

Daily Mail

There’s no easy way to say this: A guy named Jonathan McGowan has been eating roadkill for the past 30 years.

When I say roadkill, I mean mice, moles, hedgehogs, squirrels, rats, foxes, badgers, hares, rabbits, deer, stoats, weasels, polecats, otters, wildcats, pheasants, finches, ducks, geese, pigeons, owls, crows, and so forth.

In this article, Jonathan describes the flavors of some of the animals he's dined on:

• Foxes – Delicious . . . It is a lean meat and there is never any fat. Young foxes . . . taste slightly like chicken.
• Mice - They taste weird - there is no other food quite like them. They aren't particularly nice and have a very bitter flavor. They are of course so small that they are almost worthless.
• Rats - They are most delicious . . . They are quite like pork but quite salty. They are delicious and the meat is great on its own.
• Moles – They are horrible and have a rancid taste. They have an unpleasant taste in their skin to ward off predators. Wild animals don't eat them. I've only had one once and never again.
• Hedgehogs - When you get in it's all fatty meat. It's not nice but okay if you like eating fatty foods.
• Squirrels - They are most delicious. They provide a good firm white meat which is quite similar to rabbit but not as overpowering. Not many animals taste like what they eat but squirrels do have a nutty flavour. It's fantastic stuff.

You may be wondering what Jonathan does for a living. He’s a taxidermist. Surprised? Me neither. But even so, WHY does this man do this? His answer actually makes sense. To find out what he says, go to this Daily Mail article!

Roadkill Cuisine!

A guy named Buck Peterson has written the perfect recipe book for Ultra-Gross readers: Quick-Fix Cooking with Roadkill. From the book’s website:

“[These recipes highlight] the use of locally harvested, organic, and priced-right road foods.”

Keep in mind that these recipes are for animals that have ALREADY been run over. In an interview here, Peterson says,  “It’s natural, inexpensive and provides the opportunity for unscheduled exercise. Scraping your dinner off the road is a really great workout.

“It’d be a shame to let perfectly good, fresh meat go to waste like that. Using roadkill as a food source takes the idea of foraging to a new level.” 

And if you need to keep the kids busy while you're scraping a possum off the asphalt, just hand them a copy of the Roadkill U.S.A. Coloring and Activity Book! 

Bottled Bodies o' Road Kill

At first, I thought this was horrible: An English company called BrewDog has begun putting its bottles of ale inside the stuffed bodies of small animals.

The wee little squirrels, hares, and stoats (small weasels) were roadkill. Then someone from BrewDog scrapes up the animals and has a taxidermist prepare their bodies for use as bottle holders.

Why? To be outrageous and get attention, I guess. It's definitely gross! But when BrewDog spokesman James Watt said, "The animals died of natural causes...better to be celebrated and valued than left to rot," I wondered if he might be right.

Wait— getting run over by a car isn't a "natural cause" of death. That applehead! So this IS horrible: Horribly dopey!

And speaking of dopey, that reminds me of a song:

99 bottles of beer on the wall,

99 bottles of road kill.

Take one down, pass it around—

Oh YUCK!

 Story here.