You cannot drive regularly on country roads without passing animal and bird corpses. The bird may be little more than a daub of black feathers, a rook that gambled and lost. Badgers and foxes are not unusual, even around Dublin. One man notes all these corpses carefully. If it is a rabbit, a squirrel, perhaps a pheasant, he will stop. For, as a sub-heading to an article in The Financial Times Weekend section reads: "Christopher McCooey has been gathering his meals off the road." The illustration to the article is perhaps indicative of the spirit in which it is written (and published). It shows two cartoon males, their cars with driver's door still open, as if they have leaped hastily after their prey, for while one is pulling determinedly at the forelegs of a rabbit, the other has the two hind legs firmly in his grip. (Does this indicate that our legs are being pulled?) Never mind, read on. He feels, he writes, that while hundreds of thousands of animals and birds are killed on Britain's roads every year, and many eaten by foxes and crows, "often there is no reason why the meat should not provide a tasty meal for humans as well". So he will pull over to the side of the road to check a corpse.
Often a quick inspection is enough. "Maggots would put me off, but not necessarily pecked-out eyes, for this is the first thing crows do." Nor would a gamey smell deter him, but anything stronger would. You won't find any lead pellets in these bodies and "unlike most other meat, wild meat is free of growth-enhancing hormones and chemicals - the animals have not been fed supposedly scientifically `animal' feed containing goodness knows what." He has collected "pheasants aplenty". Rabbits are killed year-round. But squirrels, at the end of winter, tend to be scrawny. They should be eaten in November when they have been putting on flesh with the harvest of nuts, apples, berries. Back and haunches provide the best meat. Use the front portion for making stock. Then he gives the recipe for his last squirrel meal, including marinating in cider, frying in olive oil with chopped onion, then casseroling with chicken stock.
Sounds fine. One doubt. While these animals may be free of chemical or doubtful hormone growth-enhancers, should the unwary not be warned that, say, a squirrel may have been deliberately poisoned, and maybe rabbits, too. Anyway, an engaging piece. Y