Report on experience: dead goat edition

In my main office – Red Cherry café  – this morning I had a conversation with a very nice man who had this week buried two goats. His mother-in-law’s goats, which had died for no obvious reason, so he had to deal with them by digging deep holes somewhere on the farm, bunging them in and covering them with soil. One of them had rigor mortis, which made things awkward, burial-wise.

I arrived just after he had received a phone call to say that another of his mother-in-law’s goats had died, so he was setting off to bury it. “She has three more,” he said gloomily.

He must be getting good at this: he had buried a (dead) alpaca previously. If you know alpacas, they are intermediate in size between a goat and a horse.

I said brightly, “This manuscript I am working on is about the Otago Mounted Rifles – my grandfather’s regiment – heading off to Gallipoli and three horses die on the boat so they have to be disposed of. Carried up on deck by three men and hiffed over the side. They burst on impact, apparently.”

He knew all about dealing with dead horses on land. You get a truck with a winch, or something.

I never had conversations like this in all my years in Auckland.

So here are Monty Python with: “Four hours to bury a cat?”