Perpetual Pet

There was a story on the news last night about a company that will freeze dry, your deceased pet. My first thought was disgust, but after watching the story, I could see how it might be comforting for some.

It is not taxidermy where the animal is skinned and stuffed with who knows what. 

With this method, the pet is placed in the pose the owner chooses.  Most appeared to have been sleeping.    Here is the a link I found for a company that offers this.  Apparently, there are quite a few places that do this.  Who knew?

taken from their website  “The animal is carefully prepared and posed, supported by a custom made framework. It is then placed into a sealed vacuum chamber at extremely low temperature. Over time, frozen moisture is slowly converted into a gaseous state, and then extracted. The larger the subject, the greater the amount of moisture to be extracted. Typically, a small cat or dog will take 15 to 18 weeks. Larger pets will take a longer period of time, perhaps as much as 6 months in the case of a very large dog. However, all pets are unique, and sometimes take a bit more or less time than expected.”

I know it sounds horrible, but on the show there was a man who had done it to his little dog.  It looked so sweet “sleeping” on his little bed.  It gave him some comfort.  It cost around $800.

What about you pet owners?  Is this something you would consider? 

 

Yesterday I got Mom motivated to go and do a little shopping.  It’s gotten difficult to get her out of the house, and I think she needs to get out and do something besides stay home and dwell on her health troubles.  Of course if you’re ill, it’s hard to feel like going anywhere.  We went to Bealls, and she found a few summer outfits. I think it cheered her up a little.  She’s lost so much weight that none of her clothes fit.  Afterwards we took her to Chili’s for dinner.

Unfortunately, I missed the “photo of a lifetime” last night.  I didn’t have my camera, so I’ll have to try and explain what we saw.

The restaurant is in a little shopping plaza that has several restaurants and shops situated around a little pond in the middle.  We used to go there often and watch the many ducks that called it home.

Last night there was a family of Mallard ducks.  There were probably 10 little baby ducklings that looked like this.

There was a big rock formation in the center of the pond.  It was probably 3 feet tall.  The babies were all sitting on top of this rock, while Mom and Dad were swimming around the pond.  They were looking like they wanted to get down into the water, but appeared to be afraid to jump down so far.

We walked down the way a bit and when we came back we noticed all but two of the babies had gotten down and were swimming alongside their family.

One of the two was on the edge of the big rock, looking down into the water.  He didn’t appear to be brave enough to make the big leap. 

The other baby was behind him laying down relaxing.

We stopped and watched trying to see him when he finally worked up the nerve to jump.  It appeared he was close, but he could never quite do it.

After a couple minutes of this, all of a sudden the little resting duckling, got up, ran up behind the one by the edge and pushed him right off!  It was the cutest thing.  It was definitely done on purpose!   Then that duckling, walked down to other part of the rock where it wasn’t so high and got into the water!   I sure wished I had that on video!