In college, I had an anthropology professor named Manuel Lizarralde. Manuel was the first true hunter I’d met and respected. Spending my childhood stalking and observing wildlife, I developed a deep love and respect for animals. I had been a vegetarian for years, and eventually became a hardcore vegan based on my disgust with the commercial meat industry,  which forces us to view ”livestock” not as individual lives but as a disposable material commodity. Yet, my common sense told me that to feel morally okay I had to keep my head in the sand about a lot of things. I hated the thought that my tofu truck probably killed more animals on its long journey to my local grocery store (certainly none of which I was picking up and utilizing!) than if I had a direct connection to my source of food. Additionally, the massive habitat loss due to deforestation for those damn soy (etc) plantations haunted me. I knew that if I found a source of meat I felt morally okay with, I would rather eat that.

But every hunter I’d know was a lazy drunk who’d go out and shoot an animal to feel like a big man because he’d killed something with antlers from a distance over bait. Fuck them. I spent a large part of every fall of my childhood sabotaging hunter’s blinds, stealing their lawn chairs and carrying off piles of apples to throw into the stream.

So here’s Manuel, who’s father was an anthropologist as well, and who spent a large part of his childhood with a group of indigenous people in Venezuela who actually lived and died with the land. He hunted for food, knew the deer as individuals, and ultimately, respected them.

He hosted a barbeque at his house for us students, and on the menu was deep-fried wild turkey and venison he had marinated in the dregs of a barrel of homemade wine. At this point, I’d already been collecting roadkill and tanning the hides. And I must admit, it awoke a strange and primal feeling in me. I craved meat. I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed a chunk of raw, purplish flesh, and popped it in my mouth. It was delicious. I just knew I was going to get sick. I mean, here I was, hadn’t eaten meat in years, and now I’m eating it raw. Brilliant, Laura. Brilliant.

But I never got sick. To the contrary, I felt like I could feel the difference almost immediately in my body. Some people do great as vegetarians…. I am not one of them. I needed more.

A few weeks later, a hen turkey was hit on the highway right by my dorm. I ran out, narrowly missed becoming roadkill myself, and grabbed her. She was still alive in my hands, but died before I could grab my knife to end her suffering. A quick lesson on safely gutting an animal from Manuel, and the turkey was shortly thereafter my dinner. I used everything I could, saved her feathers and learned how to make a turkey call from her wing bones. I even kept the feet, hanging them in my rear view mirror as a reminder of the experience.

And I wanted -no, I needed- to learn how to hunt. My utilization of animals was born out of making use of a tragedy, but taught me so much about the complex relationship between predator in prey, the sacredness of the hunt, the humbling fact that I physically cannot photosynthesize and that I therefore have to rely on other lives – be it plant or animal – to exist. It wasn’t disrespectful to take another life – at least, it didn’t have to be. I felt like I was tapping into some ancient source of knowledge, rediscovering what it meant to be human before the advent of McDonalds and Super Wal-marts.

And so in a strange way, roadkill made me who I am.  Whether it’s death was brought about by a vehicle collision or from my own hands, being able to look an animal in the eye as it died made me understand in very deep and personal way the sacrifice that went into keeping I me alive, though I’d been unwilling to accept this for years. Instead of feeling guilty, I feel that I owe it to them to make my life worth it, to get the most out of every moment and have the biggest positive impact that is humanly possible. And once you cross that line, there’s no going back.