A keen-eyed Cannibal Studies student spotted this sign on the Interstate 80 in California recently.

The lake is named after the Donner Party, a group of Midwestern pioneers who were forced to spend the winter of 1846–47 in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. They became snowbound in the bitter winter that year, and famously turned to cannibalism to survive. Only 48 of the original 87 members of the party endured and made it to California.

The best part of the sign is the symbol below it of a knife and fork. One presumes this was meant to advise weary travellers that there were restaurant facilities at the Lake, but it has caused some hilarity on Facebook where the poster tagged the picture,

Nicely played CalTrans, nicely played..

Many of the comments (and there are well over 3,000 of them when last checked) gloried in the cannibalism theme:

California Department of Transportation public information officer Steve Nelson said that there are 38 restaurants past the exit, “so the sign is appropriate to notify motorists, but [we] also understand the irony and that it may be considered insensitive.”

Well, the sensitive can always drive straight past the Donner Lake exit. But if they drive 8 miles beyond this sign, and take exit 188, they’ll see this one instead,

Nothing improves the appetite like a picnic in the snow.