Consider the Vulture: An Ethical Approach to Roadkill

You never know . . . The ones you give some semblance of burial, to whom you offer an apology, may have been like seers in a parallel culture. It is an act of respect, a technique of awareness.

Yes, during the transformation of death into life we may have to catch a glimpse of something we don’t want to see, or a whiff of something we don’t want to smell. But maybe our willingness to endure these kinds of experiences is part of what it means to pay our respects to the dead. And maybe the more attention we pay to the animals on the side of... See more

In an era of tight budgets, why don’t we just drag deer off to the side of the road—far enough away so that scavengers don’t become roadkill themselves—and then let the scavengers and decomposers provide their clean-up services for free?[7] Why do we dedicate so much time, money, and sheer physical exertion to transforming carrion into trash? The m... See more