Photo Courtesy of RoadKillToys
Living in a rural area definitely has its perks because time and time again you’re reminded of just how soul-centering it is to be in the midst of Mother Nature’s beauty. However, as you emerge from your den in the middle of nowhere and proceed to re-enter civilization, the storybook tale you might have in your mind wherein all critters live a blissful and entirely unscathed existence is not quite what happens in the real world. Car bumper…meet ill-fated critter that just popped out into the middle of the road from literally nowhere. Blame it on the challenge of navigating winding roads after dark or the fact that various wildlife species seem predisposed to freezing in their tracks at precisely the wrong moment in time. Whatever the true case may be, many a critter end up getting crumpled on the asphalt and there’s not much that we can do about it…or is there?
You could instead choose to drive like a cautious granny, keep a portable foghorn or megaphone on the ready, or rely on less weapon-like forms of transportation such as bicycling or hoofing with your own two legs, but animals are still going to be taken out by others because….accidents do happen. In those instances, is it more earth friendly to allow Mother Nature to work her decompositional magic or should we step in and try to make the best of the situation? Some argue that the latter makes more sense, as in the case of a Pennsylvania program that converts hundreds of roadkill deer into compost that is then used to fertilize highway landscaping material, or in countless states across the country that collect freshly killed “organic, free range, hormone-free” animal flesh and donate it to homeless charities. Then again, what about recycling perfectly good heads, appendages and full bodies so that they can be used as fashion accessories?
Reid Peppard does it with her RP/ENCORE collection of not-for-the-faint-of-heart fiendishly fashionable adornments, ditto for Julia DeVille’s macabre Disce Mori collection, and now UK milliner James Faulkner has gotten into the roadkill fashion biz with 36 headwear pieces that pay homage to those that have succumbed to perils of the road. Consisting of bits and pieces of pheasants, peacocks, mallards, crows, magpies, wood pigeons, rabbits and foxes, the soon-to-be graduate of Edinburgh's Telford College says of his range of jaunty hats that he’s “turning something sad into something quite stylish”, feeling that “it's good that the animal doesn't just rot on the road."
Some might be entirely revolted by the notion of sporting the sorry head of a deflated-looking silverfox on their head, but Faulkner’s intent isn’t sinister at all, explaining that he finds “it very satisfying to make something beautiful from something gruesome.” He entered the incredibly niche roadkill millinery field quite by accident after creating an impromptu hat for a friend who was attending a wedding, thinking that the magpie wings he accented it with would create quite a visual statement. Today, he is quite busy scouring the streets of Edinburgh for the expired subjects of his future creations which friends of friends can’t seem to get enough of. I'm not so sure that this form of recycling is any more eco-friendly than allowing the scavengers of the wild kingdom to score a free meal, but it certainly makes you look twice. What are your thoughts regarding this type of left-of-center recycling effort?
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