A 32-year-old US woman named Manders Barnett, who lives outside 24/7 and consumes roadkill after turning it into her meal, has taken the internet by storm. She expressed the reason behind eating roadkill instead of other forms of meat. She asserted that she doesn’t want animals’ deaths to go in vain.

Manders Barnett left her job as a wildlife technician and began her nomadic saga in July 2019. Her journey was inspired after she met a man who had been living a nomadic life and travelling on horseback for six years. She felt a pull to join him and hence she planned to live a life like him. Barnett then joined her civilization-shunning soulmate. The two spent 2½ years on the road, during which they travelled 500 miles from Idaho to Oregon, in the US.

The Idaho native while speaking to South West News Service revealed, “We were living off-grid. I was surrendering everything that I thought I knew. She has been living in a tent for the last four years to escape the matrix of the modern world as she feels her heart and soul belongs in nature.”

However, she and her road companion split ways in 2022. Since then, Manders has been living alone in Grants Pass, Oregon, in a 10-by-12-foot canvas tent with her two horses namely Huittsuu and Paxtwaylá outside. She uses well water to shower and wash her clothes, a wood stove for heating and cooking and a solar battery park to charge her phone. She hunts, forages, and consumes safe roadkill, as well as gathers groceries from her local farm shop.

Furthermore, she said, “I am used to living in a small space. I spend all day, every day, outside.” Passing a message to the people driving on the roads and landing up hitting animals, she said, “Don’t drive up to dead animals and pick them up. If the animal is injured or dying, at least you know how long it has been there.”

Talking about what she survived on, Barnett told the media outlet, “I do pick up roadkill. I am really good at knowing when an animal is fresh. I love to gather mushrooms and wild flowers for salads.”

She also expressed that she doesn’t necessarily delight in her unusual diet, but she eats it rather than letting death be in vain. In fact, she revealed that, apart from eating the carcass, if it were fresh, she wouldn’t let any part of it go to waste or be worthless. She claimed that she uses all parts of the deer. She takes the tan hides to make clothes and bags and the bones to make tools.