Was heading to Richards Cajun Foods in early AM in Church Point,LA and tragedy happened..... In Memoriam.......RIP.
Last Spring I hit a mother duck with about 6 ducklings on i-15 in salt lake city. I saw em, but couldnt move out of the way due to traffic. I aimed the truck so that they would have all gone underneath. It would have worked, but the mother tried to fly away at the last second and impacted my grill. I think the ducklings survived at least initially, although orphaned they wouldnt have lasted long.
Look, things happen. I know that, but I really hate it when I hit an animal like that. I hit someones house cat one time. It sit right by the shoulder of the road until I got right up to it & it bolted across right in front of me. I mean it was right there. Again, I know things happen but I really hate when that happens. In all honesty, there are people here who eat 'possums down here. Its not uncommon, although I personally don't know anyone in 2017 who does. I have eaten raccoon a couple of times. Once baked with potatoes etc (like a roast) & once BBQ'd. I was probably 12 - 14 years old during that time. I don't remember much about it but, we ate it. I guess it was good. Having grown up in rural Louisiana, I learned to become a trapper & as I caught coons & 'possums, I had a few regular customers down in "the quarters" who would by them to eat. I'd skin them out & give one of them a call & see if they wanted it. Again, I was a teenager in the mid 70's & for me $8 - $12 for a coon hide & $2.50 for the animal, several times a week was good money for me. A really good possum hide was about $2.50 & I'd sell the animal for about $1 or $1.50 depending on how big &/or fat it was. Just FYI a good bore mink hide at that time was good for about $12 - $18. I'll also add that you had to leave rear/hind foot un-skinned on the animal before most people would buy them. Some people would end up with a big cat or dog, etc if a foot was not left attached so they would be assured it was as you claimed.
Possums scavenge for food and will eat just about anything including road kill or whatever. My grandfather said what they used to do was catch them alive and put them under a box/cage for a week or so. Feed them ears of dried corn on the cob to sort of clean their system out of any of the nastiness they had been eating. Still didn't sound appetizing to me but he grew up in the great depression and some people back then went hungry.
That's what I recall too RC.....We used to go down to the RR tracks at night, shine the rails and look for eyes.....The dumb critters would climb over one rail, but be too stupid to climb back out....It was simply a matter of running them down the center of the rails, they'd stop and play dead, just grinning all the while....We'd pick-em up and put 'em in a feed sack....We'd get $2-3 each as I recall (early '70's).....Folks would put them in a pen and feed 'em corn meal and milk mostly, with some veggies and apples too.....After a bit, they'd skin 'em and cook 'em....I never ate one, but folks said they tasted just like pork....
