 ROADKILL
the book:
Rule # 1 - DO NOT SWERVE!
May 23,
2009 – 9:14 am, by
Bob Gosford
Regular readers of The Northern
Myth will know that I have a fascination with dead things on
the side of the road and I was pleasantly surprised to find this
handy little field guide in the Red Kangaroo bookshop in Alice
Springs a few weeks ago.
Fittingly the dead marsupial on the
cover is a…you’ve got it, a Red Kangaroo, Macropus rufus.
Roadkill
is a modest book by Len Zell, an Honorary Associate of the School of
Environmental Sciences and Resource Management at the University of
New England. Roadkill runs to 102 pages but is packed with
interesting stuff - particularly for the newbie roadkiller.
Dealing with dead animals always
contains a degree of risk, and I love Zell’s disclaimer at the front
of Roadkill. Zell says that he:
…accepts no responsibility for any loss, inconvenience, injury, or
feeling of angst, disgust or nausea sustained by any person using
this book. All recipes are tongue-in-cheek and anyone considering
using them should only use meat obtained from safe sources, as
roadkill is likely to be infested with parasites and other
not-so-clean aspects.
Okay, it seems that Len Zell has
found that rarest of creatures - a lawyer who can write a funny
legal disclaimer!
But more seriously, this little
book is packed with all sorts of useful (and some irreverent and
funny) suggestions.
These include a definition and
scope of the roadkill problem, how to avoid killing things as much
as possible and, perhaps most importantly, and wise advice about
what to do with roadkill and being aware of the worst case
scenarios:
If an
animal comes clean through the windscreen, e.g. a kangaroo, they can
kill you or your passenger should you be going fast enough. Once
inside the car the frightened animal may be still able to try to get
out and in the process destroy or damage the occupants or a car’s
interior. There is very little you can do in this circumstance other
than stopping the car, opening the doors and hoping.
To
swerve or not to swerve - the answer is simple: DO NOT SWERVE unless
you are going slowly enough to be able to maintain complete control
of the car.
…If
you see or hit an animal on the road, ensure that it is dead before
moving on.
All good advice. The rest of the
book is a sort of taxonomy of roadkill - the ’spineless’, the ‘wet
and dry’, the ’scaly’, the ‘big flying feathered’, the ‘hairy warm’
and the ‘feral’ roadkill. Then follows a useful list of contacts and
websites, a Bibliography and, what is a sad rarity in too much of
Australian non-fiction, an index for handy cross referencing.
If you work in animal
rehabilitation, spend long hours behind the wheel driving across the
wide open roads of this wonderful country or are just interested in
roadkill I can highly recommend this book for your bookshelf or
glovebox.
Roadkill will come in
handy when next you run into a Black Kite as it lifts, engorged with
rotting flesh and on struggling wings, off a carcass on the roadside
- or when you run into a wombat, a snake, a horse…you get the drift.
You should be able to find the book
at most good booksellers - but please take the time to buy it, and
all of your books, from an independent bookstore.
Or you can try the publisher,
Wild Discovery Guides
here.
SHARK
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