Almost, but not quite, Heaven West Virginia

One thing that you have to say about Stephanie Blankenship and her 9-year-old daughter, Baylee: They have to have a good sense of humor.

Baylee has won a number of pageants including that of Little Miss Dandelion and, most recently, Little Miss Roadkill.

Baylee took the “coveted” title during the recent West Virginia Roadkill Cookoff and Autumn Harvest Festival, held in Marlinton, W.Va. Stephenie Blankenship was quoted in a Washington Post story asking:  “Do I really want my daughter to be Miss Roadkill?” But we all know how that turned out.

The fact that some jackass blogger in Southeast Texas is writing about Little Miss Roadkill must mean something, like I was desperate for a subject on which to write. But actually the West Virginia shindig seems to have something unique as some 10,000 people reportedly attend the festival annually and it draws a number of worldwide media people who may or may not be equally as bored.

The Pocahontas Chamber of Commerce, which sponsors the event, points out that television programs such as the Travel Channel’s Andrew Zimmern’s “Bizarre Foods” show even drops by to check out such “exotic dishes like squirrel gravy over biscuits, teriyaki-marinated bear or deer sausage.” Say what?

Okay, now I admit teriyaki-marinated bear sounds somewhat exotic unless you are trying to marinate a LIVE bear with teriyaki sauce which would be just downright insane. I have had squirrel gravy over biscuits and deer sausage on numerous occasions and frankly, I see nothing exotic about those dishes. I mean, squirrel and deer wasn’t normal fare in my household growing up but it’s also not like eating nutria on a stick or fried camel oysters Rockefeller.

Nonetheless, the cookoff sounds like something my friends and I might have contrived in college except we never named a “Little Miss” anything although we were all somewhat a little amiss. As a matter of fact, the last time I remember eating squirrel was at one of my weekend-long chili cook-offs in college. The squirrel was not part of the chili cook-off, which was held on the farmland I rented out in the boonies of East Texas, but was instead whipped up by my friend The Rev. Keith who went out and nailed a few of the tree rats on my neighbor’s property while I lay sleeping early one Sunday morning. Keith was caught by my neighbor, who didn’t particularly like me because we were always doing things such as shooting and burning furniture at parties. Yes, we would shoot AND burn furniture. However, the neighbor being a good East Texan did let Keith keep the squirrels which he cooked into some good friend squirrel and biscuits on the remains of the bonfire which held the springs from the previous night’s couch.

Exotic, you say?