Kentucky Roadkill & Spotting British Dicks

So the Kentucky Tourism board hired a British company to set up a website promoting the rolling blue hills of our Commonwealth to snaggle-toothed British people (it’s okay, I’m half snaggle-toothed) and the British company entertained our Tourism Commissioner, paying $735 for his meals — which is insane; British food is terrible, it’s like they took the French love of pastry and decided instead of sweet fillings loaded it up with meat… all they eat is mushy peas and meat pies… how can you eat $735 worth of that?

Unless it was $735 worth of “pudding”:

The website the Brit’s put together accounted for $20,000 of their overall contract. The Herald reports:

Kentuckytourism.co.uk was part of a $179,900-a-year contract that the Kentucky Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet has with British marketing firm Gosh P.R. to draw visitors from the United Kingdom to Kentucky to see horse farms, bourbon distilleries and other sights.

But it also included less savory fare, suggesting that visitors to Kentucky play “roadkill bingo” as they track the number of dead animals they see along the highways.

After the news broke, the site was quickly vanished down the memory hole. Unfortunately, the Google Cache is still with us, so enjoy $20,000 worth of state funds:

Kentucky is a big state, compared to the UK at least, and visitors must drive pretty much everywhere. Some of the drives are among the most scenic and beautiful you will ever experience, be it through wooded national parks or skirting the rolling picket-fenced or stonewalled horse farms. With a total area of 40,000 sq miles, measuring 379 miles from east to west and 140 miles north to south, there is a lot of driving to do, especially when hurtling from A to B on a strict tourist timetable.

Some drives can drag a bit, even with the jingle jangle of the banjo on the bluegrass-playing radio said stations, so it’s good to spice them up with some fun car games, using the flora and fauna as inspiration. One popular game for long-distance trips is “roadkill bingo”.

OK, it seems a bit sick, spotting dead animals, but you will never see so much roadkill in your life, and so varied.

Sadly, roadkill is a fact of life in Kentucky; the locals are used to it and as they say, when in Rome … So, if you can get over the sadness, and the blood, give it a whirl.

All you have to do is buy a roadkill bingo board game or make one yourself and tick off the critters as you spot them. Some versions include lines and grids. Alternatively, score them as you drive. With certain points for certain beasts.

I’ve scored certain beasts depending on their frequency or rarity. There’s one point if you spot a dead racoon, they are pretty much everywhere in Kentucky and easily identifiable; with 2 points for a squirrel, 3 for a hare, and 4 points for a possum (not that possums are rare, it’s just that you never know if it’s a possum or not – they range in size from a large mouse to a large house cat).

Give five points for a coyote; I saw what looked like a dead wild dog on the road to Lexington from Bardstown, and thought it was someone’s pet, until we realised we were way out in the country and this looked too big, too wild, to be a pet. Apparently there are coyotes in Kentucky.

A deer we valued at 6 points; there’s no fun in spotting one, mind, it’s too sad, but they are very common (Kentucky has the highest number per capita in the US), especially in spring, when the males get frisky and don’t care about crossing the road to mate. There are warning signs for deer just about everywhere. Give six points, too, for wild turkey, also very common but rarely seen by roadsides. And no, the bourbon brand doesn’t count!

For the jackpot, however, it has to be a skunk; 10 points. Not because they are rare – they are not – but because when you drive slowly over a freshly killed one, it absolutely stinks. If you have the windows open, or the sunroof up, award double points, because the smell is overpowering, and with the windows down you are at one with nature for some time: the smell – and it’s as bad as the cartoons make out – stays in your car for up to five miles.

Basically, the player with the highest number of points wins. Well, it beats I-Spy or 20 questions.

Road Kill Bingo is an actual game (it’s on wikipedia) and you can buy the board game and t-shirts at the official site which, by the way, makes no mention of Kentucky.

All of this does explain why our state has, over the past year, seen tens of millions of funny talking, poorly dressed foreigners who speak our language but inexplicably phrase half their sentences as questions roaming our backroads humming Dueling Banjoes and inspecting our dead animals. $20,000 is a good price to pay for that sort of return, innit?

Obviously if those stupid monarchists had done even a second of research, they would know the only kind of bingo we play in Kentucky (outside of strip mall church halls) is White Male Liberty Patriot Bingo:

Now, as I said, while I am a 100% red blooded American, I am also part of that older Commonwealth and have spent some time there marveling at their terrible beer (they call it “Bitter” and I would be too if that’s what I had to drink all the time) and the fact that everyone always smells like must and mold because they never figured out how to manufacture a clothes dryer so I do understand that sometimes stereotypes hurt and any idiot can make fun of people they don’t know — and most idiots don’t need $20,000 to do it.

Anyway, the state pulled the website and according to the Herald the Tourism Commission is trying to figure out what to do next.

The cabinet is considering whether to scrap the company’s contract, cabinet spokesman Gil Lawson said.

“We asked Gosh P.R. to take the site down while we review the material on the site,” Lawson said.