# Dead Animal Duty - unsung responsibility of Dadhood **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 23, 2009, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-animal-duty-unsung-responsibility-of-dadhood/500734 "2009-06-23T16:41:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-animal-duty-unsung-responsibility-of-dadhood/500734/21 "2009-06-25T11:27:39Z")
> [@Maastricht](#): > > 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. Small animals occasionally fall in the swimming pool and some don’t get out. I imagine that some do, but the only ones we find are the dead ones. The reality is that we find a dead animal every two or three weeks. It’s not a serious health problem; between the dilution factor (18,000 gallons) and the properly maintained water chemistry, it’s perfectly fine to swim. Consider the fact that in any busy pool, the water is swishing around the buttcracks and naughty bits of everyone in the pool. Chlorine is king. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-animal-duty-unsung-responsibility-of-dadhood/500734/22 "2009-06-25T12:12:27Z")
Try it with a toad. Normally you have to batter them with a shovel- they are difficult to kill. After dark you pick up the toad on the shovel and catapult it onto the road so no one will know where it came from. They are loathsome slimy creatures and you toss them onto the road so a car will run over them to ensure they are properly squashed. I was catapulting one onto the road one night when a car came around the corner - I had to freeze mid action and the toad with its guts hanging out slid down the shovel and onto my head. ---
**Author:** ![Lunar\_Saltlick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/977dab/32.png) [@Lunar\_Saltlick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lunar_Saltlick)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-animal-duty-unsung-responsibility-of-dadhood/500734/23 "2009-06-25T12:20:34Z")
I often drive long distances, and I often leave very early in the morning, so sometimes I’m the only one on the highway for very long stretches. One such morning I was zooming along all alone as the sun came up, when I noticed a pickup truck way far ahead of me. It kept pulling over briefly, and a guy would hop out and then hop back in. I couldn’t figure out what he was doing. Anyway, it didn’t take long for me to catch up, and then I saw: he stopped the truck – a government vehicle – hopped out, flung a piece of roadkill off the road and as far into the tall grass as he could, and then hopped into the truck to go get the next piece. This was late April/early May and roadkill was all over the place. His job, I assume, was to get it off the roads before the traffic really woke up. That highway was an incredible slaughterhouse, and it was a bad year for raccoons. There were just like squadrons of them smeared across the highway. Really depressing were the small deer. Hit by a truck, they spun into the most grotesquely astonishing pretzel shapes. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-animal-duty-unsung-responsibility-of-dadhood/500734/24 "2009-06-25T12:34:28Z")
I’ll use this as an excuse to tell one of my all time favorite kid stories. One of Bing Crosby’s kids had a pet guinea pig (I think) that died. He was inconsolable so Bing suggested a funeral. He made a coffin, dug a grave in the backyard and then sang a couple of suitable guinea pig funeral songs. Before they interred the body he offered his son one last look at his beloved pet. They opened the shoebox coffin and looked inside and the guinea pig began to move. His son looked up at him and said, “Ah, lets bury him anyway.” ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-animal-duty-unsung-responsibility-of-dadhood/500734/25 "2009-06-25T14:48:43Z")
My dog has killed (and partially eaten - eew!) groundhogs in my yard twice now. The first time, I had my valiant older brother come assist me. The plan was to put the corpse in to two trash bags and put it on the curb the next week. We each had a garden implement (shovel, rake) and gloves, and it took both of us to lift the huge thing into the bags. We put the bags on the patio, in the shade. But it was August and the thing just got smellier and smellier. I called my dad and in my best “daddy please!” voice asked him to come retrieve the animal from the patio and take it to his house to toss over the fence. I said I couldn’t do it because I drive an SUV and the dead animal would be IN THE CAR with me. He’s got a sedan and could put it in the trunk. The second time it happened (also the day after the trash had been picked up), I just called good ol’ dad and asked him to do the entire operation. He did, and it was all good. ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-animal-duty-unsung-responsibility-of-dadhood/500734/26 "2009-06-25T15:12:05Z")
> [@minor7flat5](#): > > Small animals occasionally fall in the swimming pool and some don’t get out. I imagine that some do, but the only ones we find are the dead ones. The reality is that we find a dead animal every two or three weeks.. Wouln’t a small ramp (a wooden plank fastened between the water level and the side) solve that problem entirely? ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-animal-duty-unsung-responsibility-of-dadhood/500734/27 "2009-06-25T15:37:03Z")
> [@Maastricht](#): > > Wouln’t a small ramp (a wooden plank fastened between the water level and the side) solve that problem entirely? If the creatures get to the ramp before they get to the skimmer. The problem is that the pool filter system is sucking water from the surface, so as to better trap leaves and such. The animals end up stuck in the filter basket. ---
**Author:** ![TroubleAgain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e480ec/32.png) [@TroubleAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroubleAgain)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-animal-duty-unsung-responsibility-of-dadhood/500734/28 "2009-06-25T19:29:48Z")
**bup** , I was already a fan of yours, but your doing D.A.D. just makes me so much more so, especially when you’re so obviously squeamish about it. 😃 I take care of dead critters, myself, unless they’re just SO GROSS I can’t bring myself to, then it falls to my husband. Because, you know, most of the dead critters are deceased because they’ve had the misfortunte to encounter one of MY critters. The cats kill lizards, mice, birds…the dog(s) kill possums, rabbits…the last one I had to ask my husband to take care of was a squirrel that was…well, half a squirrel. That one I just couldn’t do. (Do we have a :yuck: smiley yet?) ---
**Author:** ![Katriona](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/katriona/32/113_2.png) [@Katriona](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katriona)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-animal-duty-unsung-responsibility-of-dadhood/500734/29 "2009-06-25T19:46:31Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > My dog has killed (and partially eaten - eew!) groundhogs in my yard twice now. Yeah, I had to break up a tug-o-war with a squirrel body between two of the hellhounds this morning. I’m still not sure who the murderer was. They can both move pretty fast when they want to. My “favorite” remains the time the old, fat, arthritic one took down a bunny. On Easter. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-animal-duty-unsung-responsibility-of-dadhood/500734/30 "2009-06-25T19:58:34Z")
> [@MissMossie](#): > > 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. Didn’t it start too smell? ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-animal-duty-unsung-responsibility-of-dadhood/500734/31 "2009-06-25T21:58:04Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Didn’t it start too smell? Not much meat on a bat, I’d imagine. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-animal-duty-unsung-responsibility-of-dadhood/500734/32 "2009-06-25T22:24:58Z")
My kid is getting an early start. This summer he is working for our town’s public works dept, and the job description specifically mentioned scraping dead animals up off the road. So far squirrels hold a slight lead over bunnies, but the clear winner so far was an especially rancid 'coon that he said _“had all sorts of things living in it.”_ Gotta make sure he buckles down when he returns to college in the fall! 😛 Went thru a stretch early this spring when just about every morning our dogs would come up to us at the dog park with a somewhat worse-for-wear baby bunny in their mouths. And of course when you tell them to “Drop it” they interpret that as “Swallow it as quickly as possible.” :smack: Nothing starts my morning off better than digging a half dead bunny outta my dog’s jaws. Of course I can’t complain - the bunny is pretty much guaranteed to be having a worse day than me! Spoiler for the squeamish We decided the most humane method was to step on their head with your heel. Best if done without thinking too much about it or even looking too closely afterwards. ---
**Author:** ![CutterJohn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/91b2a8/32.png) [@CutterJohn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CutterJohn)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-animal-duty-unsung-responsibility-of-dadhood/500734/33 "2009-06-25T23:12:55Z")
When I was still living at home, my brother would occasionally swing by and shoot at stuff, since that was our hobby. One day, he shot a rabbit. Picked it up, tossed it off into the field. Later on that evening, after he had gone, I let our dog out to go do whatever it was it wanted to go do… Little did I know I would soon learn exactly what it wanted to do. Upon hearing it scratching at the door, I open it up, dog trots in. Few minutes later, it starts yacking. Gets as far as right in front of the TV, and throws up a nearly complete, undigested rabbit. So i cursed my brother, grabbed some paper towels and tossed it outside for the cats to finish off. ---
**Author:** ![MissMossie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@MissMossie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MissMossie)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-animal-duty-unsung-responsibility-of-dadhood/500734/34 "2009-06-26T00:29:22Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Didn’t it start too smell? Possibly, but it didn’t smell badly enough that we noticed it from upstairs with several closed doors between us and the bat. My sister and I who knew about it were the two that would play down there most frequently. It’s quite probable that nobody went into the basement for a couple of months. Nobody ever took note of the smell if there was one. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-animal-duty-unsung-responsibility-of-dadhood/500734.md?page=1)