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Cheryl Hughes: Final Resting Place

My Career As A Woman

When I moved to Galveston, Texas, for the two years I lived with my daughter, Nikki, I found that I readily adjusted to city life.  The noise didn’t bother me.  The traffic didn’t bother me.  I even grew to enjoy looking out of our apartment window and seeing Walmart—if I needed milk, I could just walk over and buy a jug.  The thing that did bother me, however, was the fact that there was no place to bury a deceased pet.  For a pretty price, you could have the pet cremated or buried in a pet cemetery, but there was no big oak tree, like I had back home, under which to give your pet a final resting place.
Nikki kept chinchillas in a cage in her room, and she loved the little animals like the rest of us love our cats and dogs.  Liam was the patriarch of the brood to follow.  He was a very personable little fellow, and Nikki was heart-broken when he died suddenly.  The vet clinic put his small body in the freezer, awaiting Nikki’s instructions.  She didn’t have the heart to have him cremated, and we didn’t have the money to have him buried in a pet cemetery, so she placed him in an airtight container and put him in our apartment freezer until she could figure out what to do with him.
Noel went next, then Pixie.  It started to get a bit crowded in the freezer, but Nikki didn’t have the heart to throw their bodies in a dumpster, so we just repositioned the pizzas and chicken nuggets in order for everything to fit.  I can feel you cringe as you read this, and I totally understand, but as the mom of a daughter who loves animals the way others love children, I couldn’t make her get rid of them.
I thought about bringing them with me on one of my many flights home to Kentucky during that time,   but the thought of explaining a multi-pack of frozen chinchillas to airport security was a bit worrisome. If I had been quicker on my feet, I could have told them I was transporting a kidney or a heart, they probably wouldn’t have even blinked at that, and I could have put the little guys in the seat next to me.
When I moved back to Kentucky, I brought the three frozen chinchillas with me. For a few weeks, they occupied space in my husband’s shop freezer, with a deer head and a wild turkey for company.  We eventually buried them under the big oak tree where Queen, the horse, and Joe, the dog, rest in peace. 
I foresee an archeological dig, several centuries into the future.  Scientists unearthing the menagerie will puzzle over the strange ritual that involved a horse, a dog, and three chinchillas—animals not known to be indigenous to North America.  They will have no way of knowing that we were just country folks, insistent on giving their pets a proper burial.         
 

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