There were always good pickings around the truck stop – bins stuffed with slimy sausages, cold chips doused in thick grease and clots of sauce. Even when some idiot yearling overturned a bin, the staff never bothered to chase us off, prefering to smoke slumped over a counter than chase coyotes around in the dusk.

Now and then there’s a real treat. They tend to come in late so the pups who gorge themselves in the trash and dash off again never get a look-in. But you wait around, occasionally you’ll get a truck whose human doesn’t head for the warm glow of the diner. He’ll park on the edges, where the flood lights can’t reach, and he’ll haul something chunky out of the back. There’s a nearby ditch that they always seem to pick to dump their goodies. Watch ’em, follow ’em and wait for them to go.

Sometimes you have to chew through sheeting or through clothes, but when you get it ripped open, there’s no greater smell than a near-fresh, still bloody expanse of human meat, enough to stuff yourself sick for days.