Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And Other Questions About Dead Bodies

by Caitlin Doughty

In Germany, in the late 1700s, there were physicians who believed that the only way to tell if someone was truly dead was to wait for the person to start rotting—bloating, smelling, the whole works. This belief led to the creation of the Leichenhaus, a “waiting mortuary,” where dead bodies would hang out in a fire-heated room (heat encourages decomposition) until no one could dispute that the dead person was 100 percent dead. The rooms would be watched by a young male attendant in case anyone should moan, sit up, request the bathroom, whatever. They often attached bells to the corpses, which would ring if the body moved, and alert the attendant. In practice, what this amounted to was a young man sitting in a silent room filled with hideously stinky corpses.

Can I preserve my dead body in amber like a prehistoric insect? This is a fantastic question. You, young person, are a pint-sized death revolutionary. Everyone should be on the lookout for new possibilities for our future corpses. Let’s hang out and brainstorm ideas sometime.

Full disclosure: even if you’re buried under two to three feet of dirt, it’s still possible that animals may get a whiff of you. Every once in a while, animal tracks (like coyote) are spotted around a gravesite, as if to say, “Well well, what have we here?” But they don’t dig up the grave because it’s too much damn work. Think of it like this: why do I get Taco Bell from the drive-thru instead of cooking myself a spinach kale casserole for dinner with organic ingredients from the farmer’s market? If a scavenger animal can get food elsewhere, it’s not worth it for him to dig two feet down into the soil and try to haul up your giant human butt.

Back in the Middle Ages, people used to be buried right outside (and even inside) churches—lots and lots of people. The human remains were supposed to have been moved away from one particular thirteenth-century English church back in the 1970s. But it turns out they weren’t all moved. We discovered this because badgers invaded and started digging dens and networks of tunnels down through the ancient bones, sending pelvises and femurs flying to the surface. Someone should stop those badgers! Whoops, they can’t. In England it’s illegal to kill these furry creatures, or even move their dens. Thanks to the Protection of Badgers Act (yes, that’s real), we’re looking at six months in prison and huge fines even for attempted badger assault. Workers at the church have to pick up the bones, say a prayer, and bury them back in the ground. The lesson here is that even if you make it almost a thousand years in the grave, you never know when you’ll be uprooted by a lawless badger.

Technically, per the laws of the state of California, I am not allowed to slip Hammibal into your pocket, even if he’s just a small pouch of cremated Hammibal remains. I’m not allowed to “bury” an animal in a human cemetery. Would I do it anyway? Umm, no comment. (tiny paw extends from your suit pocket)