The Badger-Eater of Cornwall

by Mallory Ortberg · October 3, 2013

roadkillI am perfectly aware that in more rural parts of the world, eating roadkill is not terribly uncommon, and I have no quarrel with this practice. And yet: this man Arthur Boyt clearly has a basement full of skulls. From Der Spiegel:

Proper preparation is especially important because some of the animals he finds have been dead for a few weeks. You can just pick off the maggots and worms, he says, and still enjoy the meat.

“I’ve eaten stuff which is dark green and stinks — it does appear that if you cook it well, its rottenness does not hinder one’s enjoyment of the animal,” Boyt told the AFP. “It’s not in the taste of the food; it’s in the head. It’s a threshold you have to step over if you’re going to eat this kind of stuff. You say ‘OK, this is just meat.’”

“I have never been ill from eating roadkill,” Boyt notes. “People have been here for a meal and been sick when they got home — but I’m sure that was something else.”

Presumably he followed up this last cheery statement with a long, low chuckle and a thump against his locked cellar door.

Last week I attempted to make tacos, only to throw them away in despair and disgust when I noticed a few dark mold spots on the ground meat (Damn you, Trader Joe’s, and damn the evanescent freshness of your unprocessed groceries). Could I have still eaten it? Could I have flung it out in the street and then come back for it a few days later?

The article also goes on to mention that eating roadkill is perfectly legal in Britain, as long as one doesn’t purposely run down animals with one’s car, which seems tough but fair.

The retired researcher’s favorite dish is dog, which he says tastes a bit like lamb. He has eaten two lurchers and a labrador that had been hit by cars. He insists he tried to find the owners before eating them. But, after failing to do so, he washed them down with red wine.

Here he comes, the neighborhood children sing out to each other in warning as he makes his grim daily rounds. Here comes the corpse-eater of Cornwall, the badger man, he comes for the bones, the bones, the bones.

Boyt has been eating roadkill since the 1960s. His freezer contains a variety of species ranging from buzzards to slow worms.

Here is my main quarrel with England. What is a lurcher? What is a slow worm? What crawling, twitching horrors shamble across the fields of England and bleed out in her streets? Here in America we have five animals: we have dogs, we have cats, we have deer, we have eagles, we have bears. Normal animals, with normal names, who either swim or fly or run on four legs. None of this lurching, none of these slow worms. We don’t have any worms here, and if we did, they’d move at a normal pace and wouldn’t try to slow anyone down.

“Boyt’s wife, on the other hand, is a vegetarian. So he only cooks roadkill when she goes out. ‘She goes to see her mother once a week,’ he says. ‘So if she stays the night, it’s a grand opportunity for a big feast.’”

Don’t come back in the house. Please. Stay out. Run.

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Mallory Ortberg

Mallory Ortberg

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58 Comments

  1. anninyn +7

    Most of the pheasant my family ate in my youth was hit by cars.

    In the UK you are allowed to eat game birds killed out of season as long as they were a: hit by a car and b: it wasn’t your car.

    (obviously you don’t eat ones that are squished or where you didn;t see them get hit).

    It’s perfectly good. I learned to pluck and gut game birds that way. It’s msot common in mating season cause they get thick.

      2. anninyn +3

        Yes, Iceberg is right.

        If you hit them with your own car, it’s legally hunting out of season. They don’t want people doing it on purpose and negatively affecting the numbers of these birds. If someone elses hits them, it’s taking advantage of an accident.

        1. mbculver +4

          Oh, got it. If that idea never occurred to me, does that mean I’m naive or just optimistic? Or both?

    2. Abanthis +9

      However, if you go out with two cars in convoy, one can hit them and one pick them up as much as you like.

    3. SarcasticFringehead +15

      Yeah, it’s not really the “eating roadkill” I have a problem with, as much as the “eating meat that is green and from which I removed maggots and worms, and also I feed it to other people” thing. And I think in our germ-phobic modern world, we probably worry about things like expiration dates and stuff a bit more than we need to, but I’m pretty sure even our distant ancestors avoided green meat outside of starvation situations.

  2. icebergmama +28

    “You can just pick off the maggots and worms, he says, and still enjoy the meat.”

    D:

    nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
    *breath*
    oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

    1. mbculver +6

      Now I feel much less aggrieved that my dad made us scrape the mold off the bread and eat pancakes with syrup that had ants drowned in it.

  3. MilesofMountain +16

    In Canada, hitting it with your car is considered acceptable hunting procedure. If you have the appropriate tags, you are welcome to hit a moose with your car, take it home, and eat it.

      2. MilesofMountain +11

        Yeah, you usually die. So, I guess that’s why the government allows it. And also why I’ve never heard of someone actually trying it.

      3. Pwickup +4

        true life story: I worked in VT for four (blissfully happy, mostly) summers. At a camp, obvi. One summer, during pre-pre-pre camp (so, like, late May or very early June), some counselor friends of mine hit a juvenile moose, having slammed on the brakes from a highway appropriate speed, I think smack in the middle of interstate 91. They were in a normal-ish sedan-sized car, and they lived to tell the tale, probably only because the poor sucker wasn’t full-grown yet. One guy had some face abrasions from broken glass, and apparently it was pretty gory and nasty (innards, etc.). Only one of the three in the car would ever really talk about it, and they weren’t spooked easily, so it had to have been pretty nuts. Yikes!!!!

      1. bustedsneakers +12

        And also to feed your entire village for a year, which is what happened last time my dad’s buddy did this.

  4. SSVerity +18

    “What crawling, twitching horrors shamble across the fields of England and bleed out in her streets?”

    Mallory! This had me silent-laughing at work so hard I think I pulled a muscle in my face. Thank you.

    2. HotDoom +8

      Just asked English husband if he knows what a lurcher is. He said “uuuuaaaahhhhhh…I think I’ve heard of it.”
      Then asked if he knew what a slow worm is. He said “uuuhhhhhh…it’s not a type of dog, is it?”

      I don’t think I want to google the latter.

        1. clarissapalooza +7

          ahhhhhhh

          every time I learn about a new animal I also learn I was better off not knowing

  6. theskyrbeast +4

    Apparently a lurcher is a cross between a sighthound and a terrier. THE THINGS YOU TEACH ME, TOAST!

      1. Johnners +2

        A sighthound is a dog that hunts by sight rather than scent, greyhounds and whippets are probably the commonest. Chase behaviour is triggered by movement as in greyhound racing.

  8. MrsHuntingCreek +8

    Lurchers are an breed of dog, famously used by poachers in the olden days in England. I learned this fabulous factoid from “Princess Daisy” by Judith Krantz, (a very trashy novel I had to hide from my mother). Princess Daisy had a lurcher. She was a cool princess. She did not eat roadkill

    1. Ashley +3

      This is exactly how I knew what a lurcher was too, and why I have a secret, longstanding desire for one.

  9. Slugs +8

    I’m imagining Arthur Boyt as the dog in the picture, because this: “It’s not in the taste of the food; it’s in the head. It’s a threshold you have to step over if you’re going to eat this kind of stuff. You say ‘OK, this is just meat.’” is how a dog would talk about meat, or at least my dog, that ate rotting starfishes once – which makes the next bit seem even creepier.

  10. MrsTeacherFace +8

    My dad brought home some roadkill that he wanted to skin and mount, which I found super creepy, but this is so much worse. I guess his vegetarian wife must be okay with it because… it’s not like he killed the animals? They are already dead, and not killed for food purposes? I think I would leave forever and change my name.

  11. priscillapeel +4

    Buzzards. Is that just another name for vultures, like it is in the U.S.? Because if so, that is the worst part of this article. Not only are you eating rotting meat, but you’re eating creatures who have only ever eaten rotting meat? That has to taste worse than a slow worm. (Probably not that much worse than a slow worm, though.)

    2. tragicallyludicrous +5

      This confused the hell out of me, but yeah, apparently a “buzzard” is actually a cool hawk thing and not a vulture.

      1. Es_Petal +4

        They’re not all that cool. My sister used to have one and all it ever caught were worms.

        1. priscillapeel +6

          That still sounds extremely cool, and I want to hear more about your sister and her worm-catching buzzard!

  12. yrpretendfriend +4

    his only friends are the dead carcasses in his freezer, whispering his name in the night

  15. Bittersweet

    Oh, got it. If that idea never occurred to me, does that mean I'm naive or just optimistic? Or both?