The death of Sammy has made it ever more clear to me that I must die suddenly while away from home. The inhabitants of my house do not deal well with death. If I died here I would lie here until I rotted.

When I came home from work last night I couldn’t find Sammy. I enlisted the husband to help me search. Snowball, the dog, came downstairs too. I found Sammy and poked him to diagnose death. The husband did not deal well.

DH: Is he dead?
Me: Yes.
DH: What do we do?
Me: Dig a hole.
DH: Where would we dig a hole?
Me: Where would you think he’d like?
DH: I don’t know. Where could we dig a hole?

We are discussing burying a rabbit on our property. Our 16 acres of property. And he’s acting like he isn’t sure if there is room?

DH: After we dig a hole, uh, see, you’re a vet, uh, can you pick him up?
Me: Sure, I’ll carry him.

Thus reassured we went to dig a hole. Snowball was freaked out too. She had gone to the bathroom at the base of the stairs. Then she ran up the stairs. She has never been able to do that before. Each step is as tall as her. She was only been able to get up one or two stairs before running out of momentum. Apparently she had never been properly motivated.

I decided to bury him between two of the pine trees in the new windbreak because I won’t plant anything else there and accidently dig him up. The husband told me that he had never dug a grave. I gave direction and told him it was good practice for when it came time to bury a horse. I then had to explain that you get a backhoe for that.

I went and got Sammy. I wrapped him in a towel. It was a perfectly good clean towel. Snowball was upstairs barking like crazy when I brought him up. We all went outside for the burial. The husband made me bury him in the towel (a good and clean towel that I didn’t want to give up) because he didn’t want to see the dead body. I am truly surprised that he did so well at my grandma’s funeral last week.

Sammy got buried at night under a full moon. I think I further freaked out the husband when I pointed that out. I don’t know of any significance to that. It just seemed sort of nice.