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Pets deserve backyard resting places
By Deborah Taylor-Hollis
I have always felt that any living thing in my house--from the plants right on up to the spouse and child--deserves respect for being a living creature. The critters we have loved and that have been members of our family are always treated with respect, even unto death. We do not flush pets around here. We bury them.
This habit started with my parents, and eventually resulted in their inability to re-landscape their yard after two decades of living there. With two dogs, six cats, a dozen-plus fish, two rabbits, and more gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs and turtles than are found at the local pet shop, my parents' yard is a bone repository. To try to dig up a tree or replace a patio stone would result in a repeat of the rainy pool scene in "Poltergeist" with the contractor stuck at the bottom of a wet hole in the ground while the haunted disturbed bones of shelties and dobies and kitties and piggies are oozing out of the ground.
The cycle is repeating at our home. When we started collecting fish and bought a 50-gallon tank, the numbers of the dearly departed expanded rapidly even as our bankbook dwindled. More than once we looked in the tank to find more than $100 worth of swimming pretty-colored fish had slowly died out until the tank was empty.
Then we would start over. The last time around, we just left it that way. Neighborhood children would come over and peer into the tank. I would tell them we collected "ghost fish." They would try to find them.
When our friend Rodger passed away at age 32, we inherited his sickly aged cat Avatar, who perished three weeks later in our bathroom and was given the last rights in the back yard. I think he is buried where I want to plant a bird-of-paradise bush.
Then our own two aged cats passed on at age 18. Wolf died in my arms, and we dug a special deep hole under the kitchen window for him--his favorite outdoor sleeping spot. Six months later, his life partner Quiche also passed on in my arms, and we opened up the burial plot to add her remains next to his for all eternity.
This of course now means that should we ever sell the house, we have to add a codicil into perpetuity that no one may ever dig, open or disturb that 2-foot-square piece of earth.
Eventually our son started wanting pets. We let him keep snails. He could collect them in the yard, make a pail of water and leaves, and keep them up to 72 hours at a time before they had to be released. This worked for about six months. In between, he also had several lizards we placed in the "relocation program." So far, so good.
Then he pushed for a fish tank. I had to do it. My son saved up his own pennies and brought home a $7.99 miniature African frog from Walgreens. The poor thing could not live in the 6-inch-square plastic case forever. I eventually capitulated to the 3.5-gallon upright with built-in lid and light. No gadgets, no filters, no aeration.
Being the doting parent I am, we also gave the frog friends. Four small guppies and a newt also lived with him. And, over time, each one--first Speedy the frog, then the four Boys from the Dwarf, and eventually Swampy the newt all were found belly-up (or worse, whitish-disintegration-face down) in the tank. They were all given a Christian burial--formal white paper-towel casket and freshly consecrated earthen hole.
Then two weeks ago, the school sent home the overflow of the outdoor science lab--crayfish, disgusting things that stare at you with science-fiction eyes and eat anything meaty in their line of vision. We brought him home, named him Thermon and watched as he snarfed up all the tiny snails still populating the corners of the tank like so much popcorn at the drive-in.
We fed him right and he looked fine. But over time, the tank got dirtier and harder to clean. Four days ago I pulled out the big debris and changed half the water. Then we fed him teriyaki marinated beef.
We will never know if it was the cleaning or the teriyaki, but within 12 hours we had an unmoving crayfish in the bottom of a tank that became so cloudy we couldn't see the body.
I whistled "Taps" as we poured out the remains into a strainer, brought out another formal casket and sent my husband out to the cemetery with instructions to put him near the garage. I don't plan on landscaping that end for another season or two. Plenty of time for him to meet his maker and completely abandon his earthly remains.
You may pay your last respects to Deborah at DTHollis@svcn.com.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
