Welcome to the seventy-seventh edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #77, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!
Caretaker or zookeeper?
Cemeteries, as we know, are often ideal environments for wildlife. While the animals take advantage of a smorgasbord of trees, ponds, lush lawns, and a sparse population of (living) humans, visitors enjoy watching anything from coyotes to rare birds leisurely roam the grounds. Sometimes maintaining that healthy balance of benefits can be a bit troublesome for cemetery managers and groundskeepers.
Take, for example, the case of the poisoned bald eagle recently rescued from a cemetery near Boston. The wildlife veterinarians treating the weak and grounded bird believe she ate a poisoned rodent. If that’s the case, it could take up to nine months for the poison to work its way out of the eagle’s system.
In the meantime, the staff of an Iowa cemetery have taken out an ad in their local newspaper to find a mate for Blossom, a goose who lost her partner in August. According to CBS News, the “lonely widowed domestic goose” seemed despondent and lonely, and had taken to wandering up to the glass door of the office to stare sadly at her sole reflection. A couple responded to the ad, saying they had a male goose in a similar situation. What happened next will give you … well, goose bumps. They hit it off, and Blossom and her mate are now living happily in the cemetery.
What a way to go
To ensure that her funeral would reflect her fun and colorful personality, retired schoolteacher Mary Stocks Martin built her own M&Ms-themed casket — and told her family she wanted them to post pictures of it for everyone to see. Martin passed away in early February, and her loved ones — whose names are inscribed in individual smaller candies surrounding a closed-eyed representation of the M&M almond character aptly named Blue — came through. A TikTok video uploaded by Martin’s grandson has been viewed over 9 million times and is officially “viral.”
A little something extra in your DoorDash bag
Talk about a May-December romance! Authorities in Peru recently apprehended a man who was carrying his deceased girlfriend Juanita around in a food delivery bag. As gruesome as that may sound, there’s more to the story. Juanita was actually a 600- to 800-year-old male mummy posed in the fetal position. The man told police Juanita was his “spiritual girlfriend” and had been in his family for more than 30 years. “It sleeps in my bedroom with me. There’s my bed, the TV set and next to it, there’s Juanita,” he said.
Clarkson’s cathedral
Jeremy Clarkson, star of the BBC television show Clarkson’s Farm, has caused a bit of a stir in his jolly old home country. Clarkson recently shared his wishes for his final disposition, and it’s not direct cremation or anything that will give his daughter the opportunity to “turn me into a nose ring.” Instead, he wants his “final send-off to take place in a packed-out cathedral where it will go on for a good ‘hour or two,’ with mourners ‘properly sobbing.’” He says that “minimalism” isn’t for him, and a cathedral that’s “enormous” and “inconvenient” for his friends who live far away would be ideal. He continued: “You often hear people saying they want their funeral to be a joyful affair. But I don’t. This is why I don’t want a jokey Monty Python song played over the loudspeakers because I don’t want anyone looking on the bright side of life if I’m up there at the front, in a box.”
Next best thing to a stairway …
In other UK news, a funeral home in Oxfordshire, England has just introduced “postboxes to heaven” to collect letters to deceased loved ones. The owners explain that anyone drop a note (which won’t be opened) in any of the funeral home’s boxes and the letters will be mixed with water and scattered with wildflower seeds.
The secret’s out
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