…BREAKING: weird roadkill news on UJBR Radio… BREAKING: weird roadkill news on UJBR Radio…BREAKING: weird roadkill news on UJBR…(This story is a sneak peek from our 30th annual edition, Uncle John’s Old Faithful Bathroom Reader, available November 2017.)
Roadkill? Sounds fishy.
In December 2015, a man named Arthur Boyt found a dead dolphin on a beach near his hometown of Davidstow, in the far southeast of England. He took the carcass home…and ate it for Christmas dinner. Boyt, 76, insists he’s been collecting, cooking, and eating roadkill since he was a teenager. The animals he’s eaten include badgers, weasels, hedgehogs, squirrels, otters, foxes, rabbits, sparrows, deer, pigeons—and a bat. The 2015 Christmas feast was special, though: it was the first time he’d ever found a dolphin. How would he rate the meal? “I’ve got to admit, it’s nothing to write home about,” he told the Guardian. “It’s not very fishy or oily. I fried it up and it was quite tough.” When news got out about Boyt’s plan to eat a dolphin, he was informed that it is actually illegal to eat dolphin—because all dolphins in the UK are “royal fish” that belong to the British crown. Boyt’s reply: “I don’t suppose the Queen will be interested in getting back a dolphin that has been dead for a month or more.”
Roadkill couture
In 2013 Pamela Paquin, an unemployed single mom in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, came up with a unique way to earn a living: she got a “fur buyer’s license” so that she could sell animal furs. Then she went to a local taxidermist to learn how to skin and prepare animal skin…and started collecting and skinning roadkill she found near her home. And then she worked with a seamstress to turn the furs into clothing—muffs, scarves, hats, wraps, leg warmers, and more. She took samples of her roadkill-fur clothes to New York City—and they were an instant hit. Today her company, Petite Mort Fur (“little death”), is based in Boston and sells roadkill clothing to clients all over the world. The animals collected and skinned for the furs include foxes, rabbits, otters, raccoons, beavers, deer, mink—and even bears. Paquin says using the pelts of roadkill animals is an ethical way to produce fur, unlike the farming of fur animals, a practice she opposes. “All this fur is being thrown away,” Paquin says. “If we can pick that up, we never have to kill another fur-bearing animal again.” Prices for her items range from $45 for coyote fur pom-pom earrings, to $2,500 for a fawn scarf and belt. (Bonus: every Petit Mort product comes with a note telling where and when the animal was found.)
