I absolutely agree with you about people ignoring their cats. They don’t require as much hands-on care as dogs (litterbox vs. walks, self-grooming, can’t knock down visitors by jumping on them to greet them, and don’t pull during leash walks, so they don’t need “manners” training), so really they can exist (not…

I’m sure they do have rules. Most captive animals have to be handled sometimes, for veterinary treatment and disease prevention at the very least. Animal behavior specialists develop procedures to safely interact with the critters, such as using rewards to train the animal to hold still for a blood draw, stuff like…

Good for Gervais. Bullfighting is so sickeningly sadistic, and I wish that there were more animal protection groups working to shut it down. But the animal protection groups that I know of are mostly U.S.-based, and they concentrate on problems closer to home. So I’m glad that someone like Gervais, who is outside the…

I agree with you about felines but not canines. Dogs and their wild kin have a language that humans can learn (body language mostly, but also sounds) and roughly imitate, and their moods and desires are similar enough to ours that we can see the logic in it and act accordingly... and the more time we spend observing…

I think it was tranquilized during the attack, not before. Which makes me think... maybe zoo employees could have a plan in place — when they see someone being attacked, one person gets the tranq darts and pulls the trigger while maybe four others go to the animal and each grab a paw and hold on for dear life —…

Is it... is it a yeti?

Well, that’s sad that it died. You could replace it with a much younger tree with a smaller rootball, then the roots will establish themselves over and around the casket. The larger/older the tree, the less likely it is to succeed... although it may hang on for a few years first!

But... without cemeteries and golf courses and suburban lawns, how would we use up all our water reserves, and where would we go for fertilizer bomb supplies? Plus, global warming would slow way down, and that would put a wrench in my plans for a tropical orchard in my back yard. I was gonna grow Hass avocadoes…

Hey, I think from now on I will always put my comments just above someone who commented “very true.” That way, to anyone who just skims without looking at the commenters’ names, it’ll always look like someone’s emphatically agreeing with me!

Maybe they’re just dedicated recyclers who are reclaiming the valuable metals and other materials that the caskets are made of. (Seriously, caskets are just huge, gigantic wastes of resources.)

London is just a layer cake of cemeteries, it seems. It’s fascinating to read about centuries of building over burial grounds there.

“Bury me beneath the willow tree

Yes, I think that’s probably more like what’s going on in these other cases. It’s not so much that the caretakers are “pretending” to bury a casket and digging it up the next day (except in CalliopeB’s case!)... it’s more that they’re keeping tabs on the older and unvisited graves and reusing those plots. Also, it…

Wait... a thousand dollars for a tree? What kind of tree? Or was it a mature tree and you had to pay for heavy equipment to plant it? Or the cemetery charged you to plant it? I’m curious, because a typical nursery tree would be somewhere between $10 and $30 where I live.

Being a closeted atheist in a Catholic community is not too bad, because it’s easy to just go with the memorized rituals in church and live your secular life out of church, with little crossover. Catholics — at least Irish Catholics — are reticent about feelings, beliefs, sex, body functions.... all the uncomfortable…

I’m grey, so no one will probably ever read this but you, but I just want to say I would have starred your comment for the sentiment, but it would be better if you just tried to educate without the personal attack. “Catch more flies with sugar than vinegar” and that sort of thing.

Now seems like a good time to mention Caitlin Doughty and the Order of the Good Death. I know she’s been mentioned on Jez before, but for newbies, her “Ask A Mortician” videos on youtube are informative and entertaining:

Ooh, ooh, I know one! It was the first one I ever heard, and I was so confused, but now I get it:

Dear Mr. Marchman, I don’t know a lot about sports, so maybe you could explain some things to me:

I don’t get it. That’s not a baby goat.