Nature as we imagine for children is this sweet place with fluffy bunnies with chequered hankies, and when we grow up we still call it “Mother Nature” as if it were some nurturing, benevolent entity. Actual nature doesn’t care for that shit. It’s a cruel and violent place where 90% of baby bunnies don’t get to see a second summer. But in nature, death is never wasteful. One animals tragic death is another’s lucky find. So here’s an unlucky shrew and a been grass snake, and some very happy insects and ant.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Ants are pretty effective at this sort of thing. In a few days, there won’t be anything left of that baby grass snake.
I am a bit surprised at the wasps munching on the shrew. I do not remember ever seeing wasps scavenge, and I have plenty of opportunities to see dead animals in my garden and the nearby forest. Probably one of those things I have seen, but not noticed.
“Everybody noms somebody somehow…”
Only people are wasteful about their dead -- filling them with chemicals and then putting them in locked wooden boxes inside concrete vaults. It’s unnatural. I hope to be buried in a simple shroud and laid in the earth so that my weary human remains can feed all sorts of new life.
Is embalming the dead common outside of North America? I can’t name a single person who’s been enbalmed in Finland and even in neighbouring countries, Lenin is the only one that comes to mind. However, coffins are used very much.
I think I posted a comment on embalming which went into moderation.
I rescued the comment, though I have no idea why that happened in the first place.
No, I don’t think embalming is very common here, nor have I ever heard of an open casket. Cremation becomes more and more common these days.
Thank you, Giliell!
Cremation is getting more common here as well, probably because the whole family can be buried in one grave, which is especially practical in urban areas. Now more than half of funerals are carried out with cremation, which is a lot, considering that the first crematory was here was built less than a century ago, in 1926, not very long after it became legal.
Open-casket funerals are also fairly rare here. I’ve seen a few pictures of one, but I will not and haven’t chosen to hold an open-casket funeral. No judgement if others make that choice.
If someone developed a shroud that’s fairly air- and watertight in short term but quickly biodegradable underground, that would be a good thing.