My friend Dina picks up road kill.
We were out on a drive the other evening when we saw the car in front of us hit a rabbit. We both flinched -- poor little thing! -- and looked quickly to see what had happened. The rabbit had been killed instantly, flung to the side of the road just outside someone's house, its spine broken.
Dina checked her rear view mirror and put on the brakes.
"You can't save it, Dina," I told her. "It's dead."
She gave me an exasperated I know look and got out of the car. I turned and watched as she walked over to where the rabbit lay sprawled over the pavement and picked it up. What the hell?
A man came out of the house. "If you're looking for the car rally, you missed the turn-off," he said helpfully. "It's just before the roundabout, past the petrol station."
"I'm not going to the car rally," she told him. "I'm picking up this rabbit."
The man looked at the rabbit. "It's dead."
"Yes, I know."
"If it's rabbits you're after," the man said, "I've got a lot of 'em. They're a bloody nuisance, they are; they eat everything in my garden. You come back here and help yourself to more rabbits any time." Dina nodded. She has plenty of rabbits in her garden too, but not so conveniently killed as this one.
Holding the rabbit by the hind legs, she turned to go back to the car, but the man called after her: "That for your dog?"
She smiled and I felt my cheeks begin to burn: by this time I had a pretty good idea it wasn't for her spaniel who was sitting there behind me in the car. And I also knew that Dina wouldn't lie -- not even with the dog sitting there in full view, the perfect excuse for someone caught helping herself to road kill. Dina is pathologically truthful: one of those people who tells the truth just for the fun of it, even when she could easily get away with a lie.
The fact is, Dina's road kill salvaging embarrassed me -- just a little. I grew up with a mother who bragged about the horrid house dresses she bought for 35 cents at Value Village Thrift Shop. Who happily recycled jelly jars as glasses and shamelessly solicited the aluminum pie plates of neighbors to use as dishes for our cats. If anything around was going for free, we knew about it and were generally first in line to get our share. And truth to be told, I'm just the same. I love bargains, freely patronize thrift shops, recycle everything I possibly can, and have a compost heap so monstrous and extensive that it gives me nightmares.
But I've never picked up road kill and neither did my family; we were vegetarians.
"No," Dina told the man, "this will be my dinner tonight."
Dina chucked the rabbit into the back of her car and we drove off, the man staring after us.
I don't do road kill, but I found myself wondering -- why not? The animal was freshly and quickly killed, right in front of us. It had been living a free and happy life in the countryside. Who's to say that eating that rabbit is any worse than buying your meat from a supermarket, wrapped up in plastic, all traces of its identity removed? Really, when you think about it, why don't more people pick up road kill?
Later, when Dina kindly described for me the rabbit's internal injuries and the skinning and gutting process, my question was answered.
