Honky Tonk Confidential – "Road Kill Stew" (2007)

The eating’s more fun

When the meat that you’re eating

Is hit and run

Earlier this month, the Oregon legislature unanimously passed a law making it legal to eat roadkill.

Oregonians can only chow down on deer and elk carcasses, and it’s not legal to give the meat to your dog or cat – the roadkill must be consumed by humans.

The death of the animal must have resulted from an accident.  Obviously, the state doesn’t want people hunting hoofed ruminants with automobiles.  

And the law requires you to deliver the head and antlers of any dead deer or elk you salvage to your local Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife office within five business days.  (I personally would be dropping off the head toot sweet rather than keeping it around the house for five days, but it’s nice of the state not to rush people.)

The fish and wildlife folks suggest you call to make an appointment before dropping by.  That sounds like a very good suggestion – you don’t want to show up only to find a half-dozen other roadkill harvesters have arrived ahead of you, forcing you to hang out in the waiting room with your deer or elk head until it’s your turn.) 

By the way, if the driver of the vehicle that hits the animal doesn’t want to take the carcass home, any roadkill gourmand who wanders by is free to harvest it – it’s a first-come, first-served situation.  

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I’m a little surprised that it was considered illegal in Oregon to consume roadkill prior to the enactment of the new law.  Is it really any of the state’s business if you want to cook up a big mess of roadkill stew?

And while the right to dine on roadkill isn’t expressly mentioned in the Constitution, we shouldn’t overlook the Ninth Amendment, which reads as follows:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

In other words, just because the Constitution and its amendments explicitly state that Americans have particular rights – the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to a jury trial, etc. – that doesn’t mean that they have only those rights.

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For example, in 1965, the Supreme Court struck down a Connecticut law prohibiting the use of contraceptives because it infringed the right of marital privacy – even though the Constitution says nothing about such a right.

According to the Court, the “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees” that guarantee certain fundamental rights – such as the right to marital privacy.

From Justice Douglas’s majority opinion in that case:

Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives?  The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship. . . . Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. 

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Justice Douglas talked the talk when it came to marriage.  But he also walked the walk – except for the “hopefully enduring” part.  He was married no fewer than four times.  

His third marriage – to a 23-year-old recent college graduate who had written her senior thesis on Justice Douglas – took place less than two years before he wrote the words quoted above, when he was 64.

Justice William O. Douglas with his fourth wife

But Douglas wasn’t done playing the marriage game.  In 1966, he divorced wife number three and married a 22-year-old college student who he had met at a mountain resort in Washington state.  He was vacationing there, while she had a summer job as a waitress.

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Two points before we move on.

First, while I don’t know this for a fact – I took a constitutional law course in law school in 1975, and haven’t paid much attention to the subject since then – I would bet that if there’s a constitutional right to marital privacy, there has to be a right to extramarital privacy as well.   (You definitely need to keep extramarital stuff private – right?)

Second, if marital privacy is protected by the Ninth Amendment as a fundamental right retained by the people, isn’t the same true of the right to consume roadkill?  (I think the question answers itself.)

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About half of Oregon’s four million-odd residents live in the Portland metropolitan area.  “Keep Portland Weird” is the city’s slogan, and from what you read in the papers, Portlanders are doing a pretty good job of doing just that.

I doubt that there’s much roadkill available in Portland, and I have a feeling that most Portlanders would eschew consuming it even if there was plenty of it to be found on the highways and byways of “The City of Roses.”  

But the eastern two-thirds of Oregon is quite rural, and I’m guessing that a fair number of deer and elk fall victim to fast-moving SUVs and pickups in that part of the state.  

Legalized roadkill is going to come in handy when the Democrats take over Washington, DC, someday.  They’ll immediately raise taxes and promulgate a bunch of anti-business regulations, which will put an end to the record low unemployment levels we’re enjoying these days.

When that happens, I predict that you’ll see thousands of hungry, jobless Oregonians driving around aimlessly in hopes that a nice, fat deer or elk will jump out in front of them.

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Click here if you’d like to view a how-to video titled “Butchering Roadkill Deer: Free All-Natural Organic Wild Venison.”  (WARNING: I hope you have a strong stomach if you decide to watch this video – you’ll need it.)

The creator of that video doesn’t see what all the fuss is about eating roadkill.

“It’s meat,” he said.  “Whether you buy it in a store or pick it up on the side of the road, it’s the same thing.”

Excuse me, but I beg to differ.  I don’t think it’s the same thing at all.

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“Road Kill Stew” was released in 2007 on Honky Tonk Confidential’s Road Kill Stew and Other News album:

If you’re looking to shed a few of those pounds you put on over the holidays, let me suggest that you listen to “Road Kill Stew” song the next time you’re hungry.  The lyrics to that song are guaranteed to put you off your feed.

Click here to listen to “Road Kill Stew.”

And click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: