If you have a strong constitution and weak nose this might be available near you. The City of Roanoke Virginia just put up for private bidding a job to clean up the cities road kill. Basically it says you need a pickup, a shovel, a broom, trash bags, some saw dust and a special account with the landfill. Weekends only--you will be available from noon till six pm to pick up dead animals in the road and at residences if the animal is curbside. I'm going to bid. The lady at the courthouse says they are following a nationwide trend for weekend road kill. If you can do this, I would inquire at your local street dept.

-- Joel Rosen (Joel681@webtv.net), July 27, 2000

Answers

Joel -- Now, I have to admit, when I first saw the title of your posting, this was not what I was thinking of!!! Great idea, though. Around here, if the carrion eaters don't pick it up, it's up to whoever gets sick of running past it in the pickup. I would imagine that there is some government department responsible, but they don't seem to be doing much of a job. Privatizing something like this sounds like a great idea.

-- Tracy (trimmer@westzone.com), July 27, 2000.

A few issues back in Countryside there was an article about perserving animal skins and it sounded quite easy. The ingredients for doing the preserving were avalible at any local hardware store. I belive the Autor of the article said he had tried it with roadkill. It would be hard to find a buyer for a rug made out of a German Shepard though! ( its a joke)

-- Mark (deadgoatman@webtv.net), July 27, 2000.

A local zoo picks up roadkill to feed to their animals. Takes care of cleanup and cheap food source. Maybe you can find a zoo too, Joel.

-- Dee (gdgtur@goes.com), July 27, 2000.

I gave my brother-in-law a very serious(sounding) cookbook and poster a couple years back called "Roadkill Cafe". Sounds Like I need to find you a copy this Christmas!

-- Novina in ND (lamb@stellarnet.com), July 27, 2000.

When I was in high school, I was able to get a great bobcat skull for biology from road kill. Dad was a science teacher so he was all for it, but the way it stunk up the kitchen while I was boiling it down to bone was almost too much for Mom!

-- Mona (notress@pass.ing), July 27, 2000.

Mona--good story. Did you all know that in the 30's when money was tight, people hung roadkill (what there was) up by a rope in the chicken house to be picked clean? Very cheap protein. Not to mention the flies it drew. Bet the hens liked it. I've kept that in the back of my mind for the "what if I had NOTHING" plan.

-- Anne (HT@HM.com), July 27, 2000.

Our biology class in Jr. High benefitted from some road kill. Our teacher would put whatever parts in a jar and let beetles clean it up for him (saving the stench in the kitchen I guess).

This project sounds about as feasible as one that one of our creative Colorado friends suggested when Denver International Airport was having its baggage handling problems. He suggested they go get all the winos on Colfax Avenue to form a "bucket brigade" of baggage from the planes to the baggage area. Pay 'em hourly in wine...A fine public service, n'est-ce pas? Sheesh.....

-- sheepish (rborgo@gte.net), July 28, 2000.

Hey,take the zoo thing seriously...in New Jersey around Princeton,there are so many deer that they are actually a safety hazard..too many dead on the roads for the local gov to haul away....there was a guy when we lived there (8years ago) who made a fortune contracting with the zoos in New York by scooping up NJ roadkill deer and driving them to the Bronx Zoo for lion food..NJ paid him to pick them up and the zoo paid him for the kitty food..way to go.....We were driving along one night in good old NJ when we saw a truck full of Asian people stop and pick up a roadkill deer and gleefully drive off with it...we read about them in the next days' paper..you guessed it..they were not going to SERVE the venison (they said) at their Chinese restaurant, but they were caught using the commercial kitchen to chop it up..yucko....God Bless....

-- Lesley (martchas@gateway.net), July 28, 2000.

It's funny, when you see things done one way, you tend to think it's that way all over. No humans are involved in our roadkill. The vultures are our garbage men of the desert. They take care of the road kill in no time.

-- ~Rogo (rogo2020@yahoo.com), July 28, 2000.

I was just reading about alligator farming (skins & tail meat) and feeding them dead animals from farms, etc. Looks like one could double their income base this way.

-- Guy Winton III (guyiii@home.com), July 28, 2000.

Sounds like a great source of high protein food for a worm farm.

-- Ed Copp (edcopp@yahoo.com), July 28, 2000.

==I was just reading about alligator farming (skins & tail meat) and feeding them dead animals from farms, etc. Looks like one could double their income base this way.==

Or you'll start Mad Alligator disease, just like Mad Cow disease!

-- ~Rogo (rogo2020@yahoo.com), July 29, 2000.

When I lived in Ohio the county maintained a list of people who wanted the carcass from a deer/vehicle encounter (the deer, not the people). They would call down the list until they found someone to come pick it up. For some people it was a free source of venison out of season. Even if your country doesn't maintain such as list, ask the DNR and Sheriff's office about their calling you.

On the both ends of the deal item, I heard about one guy who sold horse-quality hay to a race track. They paid him to haul off the used hay/straw/horse manure pile. He sold it to a place which grew mushrooms for more than he sold the hay for originally. Three way payment. Hay, hauling away the manure pile, payment from the growers.

-- Ken S. (scharabo@aol.com), July 29, 2000.

We've gotten a deer this way--got ourselves on the sherrif's list, and got a deer. It was good too--the deputy got there right after it happened, and it was very fresh. We had to throw away the bruised parts, but the rest was consumed with gusto! Hubby likes to tell this story. He was leaving the job site, right behind a coworker, who was driving a vintage 40's pick up, that he had restored and was justly proud. Behind behind my Hubby was a sherrif's car, on HIS way home. The first truck, the vintage one, had a huge buck jump RIGHT out in front of him, and there was no time to avoid hitting the deer. The buck was smacked by the bumper, flew over the hood and cab, and landed in the bed of the truck, stone dead. The driver pulled to the side of the road, and Hubby pulled over too, fearing for his friend's safety. The driver was unhurt--just shook up. The sherrif pulled over too--said he had seen the whole thing, and that there was nuthin' the driver could have done, and gave him the paperwork he needed to have a deer out of season. Hubby's knife made fast work of bleeding the meat, and the old truck wasn't even scratched--they built the old trucks like tanks! They still laugh about the buck that killed and loaded itself!

-- Leann Banta (thelionandlamb@hotmail.com), July 29, 2000.

My aunt and uncle have a cattle ranch in California, and a neighbor was leaving there place one night a few years ago, and hit a deer with their 'Caddy. Not wanting to waste it, the couple push, pulled and dragged the thing into the back seat no less and headed for home. To make a long story short, it wasn't dead, just stunned, and when it came too, they bailed out both doors while it proceeded to tear the daylights out of the inside of thier new car. Just be sure the road kill is really KILLED!

On another note, Joel, I don't envy you if you get the job. Spent 6 years as an animal control officer, and one of our jobs was to pick up dead animals in the county. Not wanting the "guys" to think I was a pansy, I never refused to pick one up. Let me tell you, that you have never lived until you pick up a dead St Bernard in the middle of summer. Did that once, at the request of a resident where it had the gall to get hit by a car. The man felt sorry for poor me, a woman, and came out to help. After tossing his breakfast in the ditch, he managed to "help" me get the huge thing into the van and then gave me his gloves to destroy! When the skin started to slip off of it, he just couldn't stand it any longer. Not a fun job, but it paid better than any other I could get at that time! Good luck! Jan

-- Jan in Colorado (Janice12@aol.com), July 31, 2000.

When we were living in Tok, Alaska, we got a yearling moose road-kill by being on the police list -- actually, they had the churches all on a list, and the pastors would call whoever they knew that needed some meat. (This works well in such a small, isolated community.) We were able to salvage most of it. Somebody -- I can't remember who -- had an experience with a young buffalo similar to the one related above, where he hit the animal and it flipped over the cab and landed in the bed of his truck. (This was near Delta Junction, Alaska, where there are two free-roaming herds of buffalo, and it is not at all unusual for them to be on the road.) And yes, they ate it!! Buffalo is a lot better meat than moose! And re: the Road Kill Cafe poster -- there is a Road Kill Cafe, in Laconia, NH, which is my nearest large town! I've never been in -- we don't eat out often -- but they don't actually serve road kill, just name the menu items as if they did! Doesn't sound very appetizing to me, but enough people must like it to keep them in business.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), August 01, 2000.

you might think this is funny. but you can make lots of money off road kill. the fact is that a racoon pelt will bring $5.00 in the winter time. a fox may bring up to $15.00 so if you collect enogh you ccan make some good money during the winter.

-- william livengood (allsmile@ctnet.net), August 01, 2000.

Scooping up pelts off the road sounds like ia good idea (after all, it seems such a waste, if you KNOW the body is a fresh one); but in Indiana, it'll put you in jail, unless you have a liscense for posession of said pelt. I have seen some HUGE, beautiful raccoon bodies that I knew weren't more than a few minutes old, that would make pruty caps--but didn't want to get in trouble with the law. So you had to just let 'em rot.

-- Leann Banta (thelionandlamb@hotmail.com), August 03, 2000.

For small carcasses you could try to compost them and help your garden tremendously.

Joel Salatin's book, Pastured Poultry Profits: Net $25,000 in Six Month on 20 Acres goes into full detail of how they compost all the guts, bloood, and feathers on processing day when they process hundreds of birds that day by hand for their customers who pick up their preordered meat onsite.

The quick description I can give here is that Mr. Salatin keeps huge stockpiles of carbonaceous material on hand, wood chips, sawdust, etc. and he makes a base for the compost pile that is 2 foot thick of this wood chips or sawdust, adds the animal material in the center and makes the sides and top also 2 foot thick of carbon material. He later applies the finished compost directly on his pasture.

-- Robert Addison (FarmerbobMO@netscape.net), August 03, 2000.