Dead Animal Duty - unsung responsibility of Dadhood

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

When I was a kid, I guess I thought wild animals didn’t die in people’s yards much. I was wrong. They die, and neither scavengers nor hardworking elves make them magically disappear.

Like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, I have an illusion of nature being peaceful I’m expected to maintain.

The latest one was a rabbit right in the middle of the front yard. As I’m the first one up in the morning, I always discover them. I’ve had other rabbits, birds, and once a raccoon over the years. This rabbit was fully grown. I can’t tell if he met his end violently or just had a lepidopteorous coronary and was later inspected by a lazy scavenger. Anyway, the scene was yucky but not finished. I had a nearly complete and stiff bunny to dispatch.

I got everything done with a shovel - no touching even with gloved hands was necessary. Nevertheless I felt an urge to scrub my hands raw, and still couldn’t touch actual food for the next several hours. And the worst part is, I don’t get to complain to anybody. Part of the job is not mentioning it to anybody - not even my wife.

Too late for Father’s Day, but here’s to all the Dads, especially my own, who have silently, stoically, dealt with critter death, from time immemorial. Until I was among the ranks, I never appreciated that animal undertaking came with the title. And yes, I do think I deserve a medal. Or a cookie.

2

Heck, I’m on dead animal duty for an exgirlfriend of mine and her sister. Any time something dead turns up in their yards, I get the call. “Help! Come do something about this bird! (rabbit, mole, squirrel, stray cat)”

I broke up with her, but I couldn’t break up with her fear of dead critters.

3

Mrs. R and I split the duty. Feathers, it’s hers to dispose of; fur, it’s mine. Of course, the time the cat dragged up a frog called for some discussion. You’ll be happy to know that frogs have fur. :slight_smile:

4

I’m a grown woman with my own house, and I still sometimes get my dad to remove dead things. I mean, if he’s there already. A few months ago he de-blue jayed my front yard.

5

Good job on your D.A.D duty. You deserve a cookie medal.

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6

I much prefer it to Live Animal Dooty.

7

Well, I’ve had to bury dead pet cats, which is much sadder than stray wild animals.

8

I agree completely. Sometimes a dad has to step up and do unpleasant work. As an fellow carcass remover and beloved pet burier (is that a word?) Hopefully this is a duty which is not required too often.

9

Good on you, OP.

I consider it Friend Duty, when I’m with my friend the Animal Lover in a car, to point out interesting landmarks when there’s a dead cat as roadkill where she would otherwise have seen it.

Me, I dispose of dead animals in our house. Besides sad, it is an opportunity to study them. Twice, I gave an animal corpse to our local Natural History museum. They were very happy with it. Once it was a mummified rat, the other time a frozen bat. It’s hard for a museum to get an intact dead bat. It’s not like you can buy them in a pet shop.

10

My mom used to say “That cat shouldn’t sleep out in the middle of the road, should he?”

Also, if anyone has to pick up a dead squirrel by the tail and sling it over a fence, note that a plastic bag over your hand will make the tail impossibly slippery and you run the risk of slinging that squirrel just any old place.

11

My husband has dead critter duty. It is rather odd since I’m always the one dragging critters home. (6 snails, 10 trout, 1 crawfish, 15 guppies, 1 turtle, 1 bullfrog, 1 bullfrog tadpole, 2 pygmy goats, 12 chickens, 1 turkey, 2 dogs and 1 cat)

He did catch me the trout, crawfish and tadpole today.

He knows, when it is alive, my responsibility. Dead? He’s the hole digger. One of the many reasons I love him. He does it very nicely.

12

Heh - my boyfriend is so bad at that. “Don’t look over there!” “Where? Arrrgh!”

13

I have a sister who not only took care of dead critters herself, she’d take road kill home, boil off the flesh, and use the skeletons as science projects for her two boys. Cheaper than the store-bought fake animal skeletons, and the oogy aspect definitely appealed to the boys. I think most of them wound up in a local nature center after the divorce and her boys going off to college.

14

I took care of them myself, as a kid. Who else was going to throw elaborate funerals for all the neighborhood children to attend?

15

I had a Dead Animal Day just yesterday. First there was the mangled body of a DeKay’s Snake randomly lying on the patio. Then I discovered the cat had left a neat pile of internal organs right under the swingset. I buried the orphaned digestive system; the snake was left alone.

16

This reminds me of the time my sister and I valiantly rescued our dad from Dead Animal Duty. Yeah, a valiant rescue, that sounds good.

My dad’s house has a basement rec room with a large sliding glass door. When we were kids, it was mostly used as a place to play with our Barbies. One summer day, my sister and I went downstairs to play and we noticed a dead bat sitting in front of the glass door. I’m not sure how it got in or why echolocation didn’t tell it not to run into the glass door, but there it was.

Keeping in mind that we were probably about seven and ten at the time, our first thought was not “Ew! Dead animal!”; it was closer to, “Well we can’t tell Dad about this or we’ll get in trouble.” To this day, neither of us can figure out why we thought we’d be in trouble. We didn’t let the bat in the basement and we didn’t kill it once it got there. We simply discovered it. Our dad wasn’t even much for formal punishments. In retrospect, all that would happen was he would remove the bat, ask if we knew how it got there, and then remind all of us (there were four girls all together) of the importance of keeping doors to the outside closed, something we weren’t skilled at doing.

So, not being able to tell our father, we did the obvious thing. We removed it from sight. Being little girls, we weren’t going to touch the dead bat or anything, we just moved the couch in the basement so that it was on top of the bat. Incidentally, that also meant it was in front of the glass door, one of the stupider places to position a couch.

At that point in time, only us girls went down in the basement with any regularity and my sister and I who were involved in the bat coverup didn’t go down there for the rest of the summer. The couch stayed there for several years and when it was finally moved because we wanted to use the basement for things other than playing with Barbies, my sister and I both claimed complete ignorance of why there was a bat skeleton under the couch.

So, Mr. Dead Animal Duty, just think, someday your child might valiantly rescue you from your hidden duty by rearranging the furniture in order to allow an animal to decompose in your basement.

17

I ran over a frog with the mower the other week.

It was badly maimed but not dead, and ended up doing that pathetic “lurching around in a circle using its one uninjured leg” thing. :frowning:

Never sure of the best way to humanely despatch a critter in these circumstances. My preferred option would be to nuke it from orbit (it is, after all, the only way to be sure).

I thought about a screwdriver through the head, but ended up with a v. sharp knife and a swift decapitation.

I felt weirded out the rest of the day, although a large part of it was the very fact of feeling weirded out. I had just put a chicken in the oven to roast, so I couldn’t understand why I was happy to shove lemons up a dead bird’s behind, but was totally squicked out about disposing of a little froggie.

However, I was informed that it was a proper “daddy job” and that I had earned approval from the Queen and Princess of the house.

18

That’s what God made teenagers for.

They sure complain when I send them to the pool on squirrel detail, but the job gets done.

Occasionally they find a chipmunk or mouse, but it’s usually squirrels.

19

What is that, squirrel detail, minor7flat5 ? I’ve seen that remark come up in SD more often lately, but I had never heard of it before. Do squirrels die of starvation in dry pools, or drown in filled swimming pools? Why don’t people build little ramps/ladders, then? I can’t imagine it is healthy to be swimming in a pool where a dead animal has been festering in. Not to mention that the squirrels would rather be alive too, I guess.

20

You can start whinging when you’re sent to murder innocent critters that happen to cross some invisible line your SO sets, as I am. Disposing of them? A mere bagatelle, I say!

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