Road kill, etc.

What I am about to say may well strike some of you (or even all of you) as disgusting (if not worse). But I can’t help it. It’s Sunday.

As you know, roadkill is a problem virtually all over the country. Thousands of deer and other animals perish each year trying to innocently cross our highways. All kinds of animals, deer being very prominent, but animals of all kinds: moose, elk, cows, coyotes, dogs, cats, porcupines, possums, raccoons, skunks, snakes, and who knows what all else. If these bodies are allowed to sit by the roadside and decompose they attract other animals, scavengers, which in turn helps to attract even more road kill. In some places certain kinds of roadkill (deer, moose, elk primarily) are salvaged and the meat is donated to “homes” of various kinds. But this is rare and even when done conscientiously cannot account for even 1% of the problem. There is, of course, the billions (possibly more) insects of all kinds that are destroyed every year by automobiles. Contrast this, if you will, with the behavior of certain monks who carefully sweep the ground in front of them lest they kill a single bug. But I digress.

Because roadkill is such a problem, the state of Oregon has begun a campaign of composting roadkill. Rather than allowing all these various corpses to decompose naturally, thus attracting even more trouble, they have decided to compost them. They have constructed a site enclosed with concrete so nothing can disturb the process. They lay down a layer of dirt and vegetable matter upon which they discard these various bodies that are then covered over with more dirt and vegetable matter. In three months they have valuable compost which they intend to spread along their highways to enhance what they have planted there and thus also enhance the beauty of said highways. At first blush one might think this is a terrific idea, and so it is, except for one fatal flaw, for thousands of pounds of material they only realize a small amount of compost. At least one state that tried this gave it up for just this reason. I have a solution for this dilemna.

Why should we not encourage people to donate their bodies to this fine cause. After all, disposing of yourself can be a problem. Burial, for example. No one these days just gets buried au naturel, that is without being placed in a coffin of some kind, usually metal. And the coffin itself is often enclosed in concrete. I don’t know exactly how this custom came about but I suspect it is a very old idea that has to do with making certain your ghost cannot escape to harm the living. In any case, what good does your body do when it is encased in a metal box and buried under cement? For me, being hyper-claustraphobic, the idea of being boxed up and buried underground is terrifying beyond belief (yeah, I know, you’re dead, but that doesn’t matter to me. How do you know what dead really means). Anyway, because such burial for me is out of the question (my living will deals very carefully with this) I am opting for cremation. Cremation, however, raises still other questions. When you are cremated you apparently leave only a few ashes. While these ashes, if strewn over the mountains or in the oceans, might do a bit of good, it seems like an awful waste. And they clearly don’t do any good encased in an urn and placed on your mantelpiece or kept under the bed. Some cultures just leave their dead exposed on trees or rocks or someplace where various animals and insects can feast (indeed, in some cultures your survivors eat you). This would seem to be much more of a contribution than cremation. Similarly, if you are buried at sea, the fishes and other creatures also get a feast. If you donated your body to composting you would at least be feeding the vegetation and enhancing the beauty of our highways. You would also be helping the problem of not enough compost. I should think environmentalists, in particular, should be interested in this. I do not think that being cryogenetically frozen or having your remains shot into space are very useful alternatives.

Just think, too, of all the money people would save by donating themselves to the composter. Funerals, as we are told often enough these days, are very expensive, running into the thousands of dollars (for fancy caskets, flowers, ministers, and so on). Not only would you save money, you would also save your survivors from all the confusion and problems involved in making the decision as to what to do with you (I know from experience this can be a real problem). There is also the problem, at least in some places, of space to bury all the bodies that accumulate during the course of time. I have heard of cases where people have ended up burying people on top of the already buried. Also, in other areas, there is no suitable burial ground because of ground water, flooding, or whatever. By sensibly offering your body to the composter you would be helping to eliminate all these problems. Just think of it as a community service. You would become a kind of martyr (of course you might not want to give up the 72 virgins who are waiting for you in heaven, or the wings and harp, or whatever). Maybe Congress could strike some kind of medal to be awarded posthumously to your survivors. And think of all the thousands of acres of land, especially in Europe and Asia, that could have been used for productive purposes instead of littered with the corpses of soldiers killed for lies and stupid reasons.

Mind you, while I think this is a great idea, I am not prepared to be the first volunteer. However, if the idea caught on, and other people were doing it, I would consider it (I fear I am a follower of fads rather than an inventor or innovator). I guess when it comes right down to the real nitty-gritty, I’d go along with anything except being buried in a small box in the ground, aaaagh!

“Little white flowers
will never awaken you,
not where the black coach of sorrow
has taken you. Gloomy Sunday.
(Billie Holliday)