Roadkill
by Glenn Muir
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: None.
Description: The road is a dangerous place, especially if you are small and fluffy or are covered in feathers, but, hey, one man's roadkill is another man's meat.
Swearwords: None.
Description: The road is a dangerous place, especially if you are small and fluffy or are covered in feathers, but, hey, one man's roadkill is another man's meat.
Country roads, apart from the ones taking me home, are very dangerous. All of those miles of bends, blind summits, cyclists, horse- riders, agricultural machinery and unexpected livestock. None of these are as dangerous as those lunatics in the oncoming traffic hurtling towards you at death wish speed. The levels of roadkill on country roads emphasise just how dangerous. Roads out in the sticks are even more dangerous at night, especially if you are some unfortunate woodland creature minding your own business.
Most of the time it is the rabbits and hedgehogs that bear the brunt of the carnage. Now, you may call me heartless and unfeeling, but a dead bunny lying squashed on the road does not bother me in the slightest. I must admit that seeing other creatures in similar circumstances does bother me. Badgers, for example, if I see the mangled body of one of those lying on or adjacent to the road, it does sadden me a bit. The same goes for foxes, roe deer and stoat.
There are even occasions when the sight of a bit of roadkill gladdens my heart. What?, I hear you say. I know that sounds dead callous, but if it’s a magpie or a grey squirrel, I reckon the world is a better place with fewer of them.
I was listening on the radio the other day, some guy in England was going on at some length about how he stocked his larder with roadkill. He claimed to have sampled numerous different creatures as part of a healthy and balanced diet. Rabbit, pheasant, partridge, hare, red deer, fallow deer, roe deer, squirrel and muntjac are okay (I suppose) and would probably be quite easy on the palate, done in an appropriate Schwartz sauce with veg. However, badger, fox , dog, cat, stoat, hedgehog, buzzard, crow or seagull just would not appeal, even if they were done in a nice vindaloo gravy.
I think the chap in question only used fresh roadkill in his recipes. I did have a picture in my mind’s eye of a furtive figure scraping up flattened roadside pizzas with a shovel.
As I say, seeing roadkill can be a bit upsetting (unless it is a magpie, grey squirrel or a Tory MP). However, far worse than seeing the remains is the feeling you get when you hear the thud and crunch as your front wheels hit the whatever it was. Now there is no point in crying over squashed bunnies and there is no reason to stop, nothing to be gleaned (after all, rabbits or whatever do not carry ivory or have horns which can be powdered and used as an aphrodisiac).
Over the years I have run over the odd rabbit or two, I even hit a half-grown lamb once (it does not count as a kill, it darted in front of my works van, bouncing off the bonnet and roof, landing in a heap at the rear. To my relief, it just shook itself and made its way back to its field looking sheepish, but there again it was in its nature to look sheepish, it being a sheep).
Twice, whilst a passenger in the boss’s motor, the driver blethering away about golf or something equally boring, I witnessed roadkill first hand. First time it was a brown hare on the A706, “Blah, blah (golf speak), blah,” he drawled in his usual boring monotone. I stifled a yawn, then there was a loud thud from underneath the vehicle and another suicidal March hare bit the dust. “Blah (more golf speak), blah, blah.”
The second time was really quite sad, so intent was he on recounting tales of his wrist-slashingly boring round of golf, that he did not notice the mallard duck and drake which were waddling innocently on the A706 near the outskirts of Linlithgow. So engrossed were they in their tryst that they never knew what hit them; in fact, what hit them did not know he’d hit them either.
You are probably wondering why I am here boring you with this rubbish, you will no doubt wonder why my car has ended up in this ditch and I was cursing at the top of my voice just a short time ago.
Bloody magpie! Swerved onto the verge so I that could get the bugger, saw the ditch too late. Oh, and irony of ironies, it had been feeding on roadkill, aye you guessed it, a grey squirrel.
“Moo” to you, too, now away and chew your cud.
Most of the time it is the rabbits and hedgehogs that bear the brunt of the carnage. Now, you may call me heartless and unfeeling, but a dead bunny lying squashed on the road does not bother me in the slightest. I must admit that seeing other creatures in similar circumstances does bother me. Badgers, for example, if I see the mangled body of one of those lying on or adjacent to the road, it does sadden me a bit. The same goes for foxes, roe deer and stoat.
There are even occasions when the sight of a bit of roadkill gladdens my heart. What?, I hear you say. I know that sounds dead callous, but if it’s a magpie or a grey squirrel, I reckon the world is a better place with fewer of them.
I was listening on the radio the other day, some guy in England was going on at some length about how he stocked his larder with roadkill. He claimed to have sampled numerous different creatures as part of a healthy and balanced diet. Rabbit, pheasant, partridge, hare, red deer, fallow deer, roe deer, squirrel and muntjac are okay (I suppose) and would probably be quite easy on the palate, done in an appropriate Schwartz sauce with veg. However, badger, fox , dog, cat, stoat, hedgehog, buzzard, crow or seagull just would not appeal, even if they were done in a nice vindaloo gravy.
I think the chap in question only used fresh roadkill in his recipes. I did have a picture in my mind’s eye of a furtive figure scraping up flattened roadside pizzas with a shovel.
As I say, seeing roadkill can be a bit upsetting (unless it is a magpie, grey squirrel or a Tory MP). However, far worse than seeing the remains is the feeling you get when you hear the thud and crunch as your front wheels hit the whatever it was. Now there is no point in crying over squashed bunnies and there is no reason to stop, nothing to be gleaned (after all, rabbits or whatever do not carry ivory or have horns which can be powdered and used as an aphrodisiac).
Over the years I have run over the odd rabbit or two, I even hit a half-grown lamb once (it does not count as a kill, it darted in front of my works van, bouncing off the bonnet and roof, landing in a heap at the rear. To my relief, it just shook itself and made its way back to its field looking sheepish, but there again it was in its nature to look sheepish, it being a sheep).
Twice, whilst a passenger in the boss’s motor, the driver blethering away about golf or something equally boring, I witnessed roadkill first hand. First time it was a brown hare on the A706, “Blah, blah (golf speak), blah,” he drawled in his usual boring monotone. I stifled a yawn, then there was a loud thud from underneath the vehicle and another suicidal March hare bit the dust. “Blah (more golf speak), blah, blah.”
The second time was really quite sad, so intent was he on recounting tales of his wrist-slashingly boring round of golf, that he did not notice the mallard duck and drake which were waddling innocently on the A706 near the outskirts of Linlithgow. So engrossed were they in their tryst that they never knew what hit them; in fact, what hit them did not know he’d hit them either.
You are probably wondering why I am here boring you with this rubbish, you will no doubt wonder why my car has ended up in this ditch and I was cursing at the top of my voice just a short time ago.
Bloody magpie! Swerved onto the verge so I that could get the bugger, saw the ditch too late. Oh, and irony of ironies, it had been feeding on roadkill, aye you guessed it, a grey squirrel.
“Moo” to you, too, now away and chew your cud.
About the Author
West Lothian-born Glenn Muir is a fiftysomething postman working in Linlithgow. Previously a member of the West Lothian Song Writers Group, he is now with Quill, a poetry and writing group based in Bathgate.