Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Pet Cemetery

In today's Asbury Park Press there is an article about a very upscale final resting place for pets.

You can read the article at:

Final resting place for pets

In the story, Bob Jordan quotes Howard Schoor as saying pet funerals will cost "from a couple of hundred dollars to a couple of thousand dollars." Schoor has big plans.

We have always buried our pets in the backyard. It hasn't cost us anything. Of course, we never had any large pets. I can understand that the burial of a dead horse would be a gigantic undertaking. However, for parakeets, fish, and guinea pigs, the backyard has been sufficient.

We have always embellished the burial with a pertinent reading of the scriptures and a prayer. One of the most distressing pet burials happened to be the one for Pansy, a sweet little guinea pig. She happened to die on one of those miserable winter days when the weather outside consisted of sleet and freezing rain. My husband, at work, instructed me to use the post hole digger. I did that, but then the hole filled up with rain. I had to use the old manual boat pump to remove the water before we could place the deceased Pansy in the hole.

I was rather broken up about the event, in addition, I was exhausted from all my digging. My middle daughter read the twenty-third psalm.

When spring arrived, our youngest daughter planted some crocuses and daffodils at the site. I think it is much nicer so have our furry friends here in the backyard. Maybe there are some people who don't know how to use a post hole digger--or those who have a dead horse--but I won't be spending large amounts of money for our little pets.

3 comments:

Live, Love, Laugh said...

awww! I loved this post and I do think a horse burial would be a HUGE undertaking! I really enjoyed this post!, haven't really ever thought about paying for a pet burial. Interesting to think about though.

Anonymous said...

We have always buried our pets in the backyard. I agree with you about burying your pets close by.

Just make sure they are deep enough. One time we left in the middle of the night for a vacation and when my son went to say goodbye to his pet snake, the snake was already "bye."

I told my son to quickly bury the snake in the yard and I should have known how that would translate in the mind of a nine year old.

When we called my mother-in-law later that day to check on the other pets, my black lab proudly walked into her house and dropped the dead snake in my mother-in-law's lap while we were on the phone with her.

Leann said...

Oh Lita, that would be funny yet sad.

We've only had to bury one pet. My favorite cat had to be put down and we buried her in the back yard. It was raining and like yours penalope, the hole kept filling with water. It was very difficult to lay that still warm body into that cold damp hole and say goodbye. Husband #2 and I cried like children. The children were in the house thinking we had lost our minds.