The Idler

PET DEATHS

THEY JUST COME APART IN YOUR HANDS

I’m interested in your pets. I want true stories about how your pets, or the pets of your friends, met their end. Submit all pet death, or pet near-death stories to theidlers@idler.co.uk

1) Elvis the Rabbit.
Elvis only lived a day. His Mum, Snowdrop, got hungry and ate him.

2) My gerbils: Little and Large.
Little was an anorexic and wasted away until he died, an emaciated victim of his own self-torture, on the saw-dusted floor of his tiny cage. Large refrained from eating him. We were surprised and touched by his instinctive sibling loyalty. Instead he entered into a comfort food binge which was curtailed only when his stomach burst in orgiastic fury and his intestines spewed over the little plastic wheel the two brothers had spent so many happy hours playing on. The tragedy didn’t end there - devastated, I buried him and repaired to the local church, kneeling in a pew and sobbing for his soul. The new curate snuck up on me, assured me of god’s grace to all pet’s of the world, and suckered me into Sunday school and guitar strumming for the next two years.
Eloise Millar

At age 12 my friend Martin was the proud owner of a brand new hampster, Dunny. One afternoon while we had Dunny out on the bedroom carpet, Martin’s aunt came visiting with her son in tow.

Little Andrew was only 5 and thought Dunny was the greatest thing going and was desperate to play with this living toy. Stepping inside the ring of rolled up jumpers Martin put down to stop Dunny running away, Andrew tripped and stumbled on a cardigan. Fate decreed that there was only one place Andrew could fall and with an accuracy that amazed us knelt on Dunny, crushing him to oblivion.

The last we saw of the poor creature was various guts being scrapped from Andrew’s knee into the bin. Kevin maintains you can still see the bloodstains on the carpet.
Dave Heffron

When I was young we had a Great Dane called Quinn, Quinn was a very large dog indeed. Great Danes suffer from the affliction of having huge bodies, yet small hearts - and I’ve found it quite common for them to just drop dead from a heart attack at any given moment without any warning (as happened a couple of months ago with our second Great Dane, Mutley). Quinn was in my bedroom when she suddenly died, it was very late at night, too late do anything about it, so after many tears we let her rest in peace on the floor until morning. The problem now was that rigor mortis had set in - you can imagine our distress trying to carry an 11 stone, rock solid dog down two flights of steep stairs, it became something of a pre-breakfast toboggan ride.
Shane

One snowy Christmas morning when I was a kid, I came running downstairs at crack of dawn only to discover my pet hamster, Oliver, dangling by his hind leg from the outside of his wire cage. It appeared he’d made a desperate bid for escape and squeezed through the steel bars (without facilitative lubrication), only to get his little leg stuck, from which he dangled helplessly through the night. We eased him free, and my grandad decided he was in shock. The therapy for this kind of trauma, he calmly assured us, was to wrap Oliver in a blanket, spoonfeed him whisky and pop him in the boiler cupboard to get warm again. I just hope the little fella was too bladdered to feel the pain of the smothering heat as it overpowered him and he passed away…
Alex Robertson

The children who live next door to me used to have a small, white rabbit called Fluffy. One day, fluffy somehow managed to escape, and ran into the garage, which had been left open. Not noticing that Fluffy was in there, their dad closed the electric garage doors using a remote control. Unfortunately, Fluffy was in the way, and the door closed on the rabbit’s head, killing it instantly. The children were told that Fluffy died of natural causes.
brodders83@hotmail.com

1. Bunjee was an adorable lop-eared rabbit that would spray you with stinking piss when you tried to pick him up, and attempt to mate with footballs rolled across the lawn.

One morning my nine-year-old brother found Bunjee lying stiff, glaze-eyed, and stone dead in his hutch, the salt lick half-eaten overnight. Apparently he had been poisoned by the disinfectant used to clean his hutch. But we don’t really know the cause of death.

It was Christmas Eve, 1987. Bunjee was interred in our backyard, his grave marked with a tiny granite headstone.

2. One summer my sister agreed to care for our neighbors’ cat, Aslan, while they were away on vacation for two weeks. About four days into it, she came home crying, having found Aslan dead at the foot of our neighbors’ cellar stairs. My mother assigned me the task of coroner. Reluctantly, I agreed. I was twelve years old.

I went next door to our neighbors’ home. From the top of the cellar stairs I could see the corpse sprawled at the landing. Its head was twisted at a funny angle. Funny strange, not funny ha-ha. When I picked it up, the stiff cat peeled off the floor with a sound similar to Velcro, and a large black beetle crawled out of its mouth. Resisting the urge to vomit I wrapped Aslan in several plastic trash bags, brought him home, and put him in the kitchen freezer clearly labeled “DEAD CAT,” to my mother’s chagrin. I merely wanted to preserve the remains for our dear neighbors whilst avoiding any confusion among my family about the contents of the parcel. What if they thought it was a roast? My mother made me remove the label.

My sister had a friend who volunteered at an animal hospital, who examined the poor animal. This aspiring veterinarian confirmed that the cat did indeed die from a broken neck. I contend that the cat choked on a swallowed beetle and killed itself attempting to either ascend or descend the cellar stairs. When our neighbors returned home with their two children ten days later, they had a pleasant burial ceremony in their back yard.

I don’t know whether they first thawed Aslan or not.
xopherck@earthlink.net