All the things you might or not say about roadkill

I guess you might say I have an affinity for roadkill.

Oh, it’s not something I’m proud of. It’s just that over the years, roadkill and I have often crossed paths, and I guess you could say that I took the path less traveled by most people.

Take, for example, that freshly killed mink I found on Springinsguth Road in Schaumburg 35 years ago. It lay at the edge of the street next to the bridge over the creek, and I could see that it had been a beautiful, healthy animal before it crossed paths with a vehicle just the night before.

Although minks are plentiful in Illinois, it is rare to see one because they move about mostly at night, searching for some kind of carnivorous meal. In the suburbs, you are most likely to meet a mink when either one or the other of you lies dead at the side of the road.

In this meeting, it was the mink that was dead at the side of the road. I felt a deep sense of loss, not only the loss of a marvelous creature’s life, but also the loss of a beautiful mink hide that would only end up flattened and decomposed at the side of the road.

I was fascinated by the creature and wanted to examine it further, but since it was probably illegal to be in possession of a protected animal’s carcass without a license to harvest it, all I can say is that I may or may not have brought it home, skinned it, and tanned its hide.

That was a long time ago, but I have had more recent roadkill encounters as well. While in Florida this February, I was riding a bicycle down a dirt road in the western Everglades, when I saw a beautiful coral snake lying dead in the road. Like the mink, it too was freshly dead, because it hadn’t been there the day before when I pedaled down that road.

A coral snake is a beautiful creature with bright red, yellow, and black bands around its length, but because it is highly venomous, it’s a thing you probably don’t want to meet in person — unless it’s dead. And though I have spent most of my life exploring the outdoors but had never seen one before, and because this one was offering itself up either to me or to the vultures at no risk to our health, I may or may not have skinned it and preserved its hide with a mixture of glycerin and alcohol, as explained on YouTube.

That may or may not have been the first time that I skinned a snake. Just last summer, as Carol and I walked around Wildflower Meadow in Sun City, we found a beautiful four-foot-long Eastern fox snake lying dead along the asphalt path. It had been newly killed by some critter or other, and it had only begun to smell a bit tangy — but that might be because fox snakes exude a pungent defensive smell when threatened. The smell, it is said, is similar to that of fox urine, which accounts for the snake’s name, but because my roadkill path has never yet encountered a dead fox, I can’t confirm that scent-similarity. I’ll keep you posted if a fox is ever featured in future roadkill meet-ups.

Again, I’m not sure if Illinois laws permit harvesting and preserving road-killed fox snake skins, so that skin may or may not have been preserved, and it may or may not be on display in my house.

I’m sorry if you’re reading this while having supper or snacking and the subject is putting you off your feed. As I said at the outset, I often take the path less traveled.

In my defense, I blame my wordsmith friend Lynn, who just this morning texted me her new word of the day, “Fernweh,” which is: “An aching desire to travel that is so profound that it makes you feel a sense of ‘homesickness’ for a far-off place.” A synonym might be “wanderlust.” Both words come to us from German, though modern Germans consider “wanderlust” a more archaic word for the same feeling. So today, fernweh is the way to go.

And no sooner had I read the word than I had a name for that feeling deep inside, that desire to hit the road and see what the road has to say to me. The silky, sunny days of June have that effect on me.

Of course, given my relationship with the road and all those unfortunate critters whose lives go to waste when they encounter it, it didn’t take long before my fernweh gourmet kicked in and I started brainstorming roadside recipes — Pesto possum? Raccoon bourguignon? Cat cacciatore? I’m not sure if it’s legal, but my next roadkill meet-up might or might not get wrapped in aluminum foil, plopped onto the engine block, and be ready to eat by the time I hit the Mississippi River.

And depending on how that might or might not turn out, I might or might not someday publish a Roadkill Recipe Book — the only cookbook that might or might not be endorsed by AAA.

I’ll keep you posted. Maybe.

TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com.

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