Goldfish

The dead squirrel referred to previously is not my first brush with getting rid of dead animals. My son has a fairly dismal record with pets.

This is a picture of him at 2 and a half years of age, gazing fondly at our goldfish. Unfortunately, he was kind of a “hands on” kid and gazing fondly only worked for about 10 minutes. After that he wanted to reach in and hold on to the goldfish. He was instructed not to touch the fish, but, again, he was not the most obedient of children. After owning the fish for only a couple of days, it was discovered floating in the bowl, a victim of too much love.

He had another goldfish at about age 11, and I think he won the fish at a school carnival. We got a bowl, put in water, rocks, little diving guys. And the next day, the fish was dead. So we motored out to Walmart and bought another fish, which turned up dead again the next day. We went back to Walmart, complained about the defective fish they had sold us, and got another one for free. It, too, was dead the next day. Once is bad luck, two is a freakish coincidence, three times is serial murder. Upon further investigation, it was found that the rocks my son had put in the bowl came from our gravel driveway, which I regularly sprayed with Roundup, to kill the weeds. Another mystery solved, another pet buried beside the house.

Squirrels

Recently I had a close encounter of the squirrel kind. I came home on a Monday afternoon and walked out into my back yard to survey my kingdom. Just as I got to the garage patio, I noticed a squirrel laying in the grass. (For those of you non-squirrel people, this is not normal behavior). On closer inspection (5 feet away) I saw that the back 1/2 of his body was kind of smashed and his tail looked like he'd been caught out in the rain. And there were flys crawling around on him. He looked good and dead.

As a single parent, I have conducted more than a few "animal funerals". So after a couple of ladylike "ewe's", I told myself I was a grownup and could take care of this situation without calling an uncle or cousin. I went in the house and got a paper bag (for burial - didn't want to use a plastic bag, or it would take 100 years for the squirrel to biodegrade). Then I went into the garage to get a shovel (to pick up the body from a safe distance). As I came out of the garage, the squirrel picked up his head and looked right at me. After hastily propping the shovel against the garage, I speed-walked back into the house and locked the door behind me (in case the squirrel proved to have super powers and followed me and tried to open the door).

Then I called an uncle. He said to leave it alone and it would be dead by morning. My aunt said to hit the squirrel with the shovel. She's a little bloodthirsty, but did not volunteer to come over and do the deed herself.

The next morning the squirrel had moved a little, but was still in the same place. The following afternoon, Wednesday, I went out and banged the shovel on the cement to see if I could get a rise out of the squirrel. No activity and he was starting to smell. So shovel in hand, I scooped up the dead animal, gently placed it in the paper sack and rolled the top down, then, holding my breath, speed-walked to the trash can and deposited the sack inside.

Luckily, my trash goes out on Wednesday night. I'm sure the trash guys swooned when they took off the lid of the trash can and got a whiff of Rocky. I imagine they had a nice, tasteful memorial for him out at the landfill.