QUIRKY WORLD ... A daily look at some of the world’s stranger stories
Take one dead badger, head and all, dust with flour and herbs, season and braise for five hours — that’s the recipe for a perfect stew, according to British roadkill eater Arthur Boyt.
From dogs and cats to polecats and mice, Boyt, 74, insists there is nothing tastier than scooping up a dead animal from the roadside and taking it back to his remote home in Cornwall to skin, gut, and cook.
Boyt, a nature obsessive whose house is dotted with animal skulls and taxidermy, has been eating roadkill since the 1960s and thinks more people should do the same.
“People say ‘oooh, do you really?’ when I say I’m having roadkill. I say ‘well, if you tried it, you would probably enjoy it’,” Boyt said.
“It’s not in the taste of the food, it’s in the head.”
The retired researcher’s favourite dish is dog — he has eaten two lurchers and a labrador which were hit by cars. He insists he tried to find the owners before eating them. Boyt compares the “smooth, round, sweet” flavour of dog meat to lamb, adding: “I’d drink a red wine with it — possibly a Chianti.”
A Long Island animal control officer found with more than 850 snakes in his garage is moving them to a storage facility until he can open his own store.
An attorney for Richard Parrinello told Newsday his client is deciding among three properly zoned locations.
He says moving the reptiles is difficult because it’s the end of their breeding season, when female snakes care for their eggs.
The town of Brookhaven says Parrinello is cooperating but has four weeks to get the snakes out of his garage.
Authorities removed two 6ft Burmese pythons from Parrinello’s garage earlier this month. Burmese pythons are illegal to own in New York State without a permit.
Most of Parrinello’s snakes are legal, but he’s been cited for not having proper permits.
A wanted burglar has been jailed after he admitted stealing a kayak and trying to paddle across one of the world’s busiest sea lanes to start a new life in France.
Paul Redford, 46, was on the run after committing thefts in Darlington and Blyth, Northumberland, dating back to 2011, when he had to be rescued a mile into the English Channel by the RNLI.
Teesside Crown Court heard that Redford, a triallist for the English homeless football team, broke into a holiday chalet in Camber, East Sussex, cooked food for himself and spent the night there. Redford was jailed for two years and five months after he pleaded guilty to two counts of theft and one of burglary.
Joggers are being warned to mind their manners when they run around the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo, after a spate of rudeness.
Officials say tourists and older visitors to the grounds have complained of runners crashing into them from behind and then trotting off without saying sorry.
“In some cases, the victims were jeered at or yelled at by joggers,” said an official from Chiyoda-ku, the ward in Tokyo that is home to the palace.
Chiyoda-ku officials, who say they have received around 100 complaints in the last three-to-four years, have now erected signs urging joggers to observe the rules: yield to pedestrians, run counter- clockwise, and be polite.
Japan’s strict codes of behavioural conduct, which govern everything from riding the subway to using a public bath, are routinely reinforced by signs or noticeboards filled with do’s and don’ts.
While some older Japanese bemoan slipping standards of behaviour, public confrontations and outright rudeness are very rare, even in densely populated Tokyo.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
