Hi all,

the last weekend I was traveling with a (rent) car when I noticed an object
at  the edge of the road. Obviously a dead animal. I parked the car and re-
turned to the point finding a dead marten. It had been killed by another
car. It was already stiff (better expression?) and had a faint "wild" smell,
not unpleasant.

Hm. Remembering Zephyr's story about eating a predator which was infested
by parasites I was a little uncertain what to do.
Finally I decided to take the little animal home for further examination.
The marten had a nice fur and its only injury was at the head which had
clotted blood on it. It had teeth similar to those of cats so I classified
it as a predator. Also it had claws similar to a cat.

At home I took my scale: the marten had a weight of 1.8 kg. Quite a meal if
one wants it.
Then I took a pair of scissors and cut it open. At this point the faint
wild smell increased a lot and became very strong. Not really bad but
certainly not attracting for me.
I found a big big stomach which contained partially plant food, quite long
intestines (but I've got no experience with such things), a huge liver
(interesting - was this the normal size???) and of course a pair of kidneys,
the heart and the lungs.
None of these organs smelled attractive so I decided to stay away from eating something.

I was not very cautious about cutting the dead body open and risked an
infection from two little wounds on my fingers because the blood of the
animal came into contact with my injuries. Well nothing happened so far.

So for this time I didn't make a meal of my "prey" and I'm still not sure
I will if one time I find it attractive.

Best instinctive regards,

Stefan

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