Title: Mourning animals : rituals and practices surrounding animal death /
Authors: DeMello, Margo
Year: 2016
Subjects: Dead animals.; Pets Death.; Pets Funeral rites and ceremonies.; Animal cemeteries.; Human-animal relationships; Animal cemeteries; Dead animals; Human-animal relationships; Pets Death; Pets Funeral rites and ceremonies
Abstract: We live more intimately with nonhuman animals than ever before in history. The change in the way we cohabitate with animals can be seen in the way we treat them when they die. There is an almost infinite variety of ways to help us cope with the loss of our nonhuman friends--from burial, cremation, and taxidermy; to wearing or displaying the remains (ashes, fur, or other parts) of our deceased animals in jewelry, tattoos, or other artwork; to counselors who specialize in helping people mourn pets; to classes for veterinarians; to tips to help the surviving animals who are grieving for their animal friends; to pet psychics and memorial websites. But the reality is that these practices, and related beliefs about animal souls or animal afterlife, generall only extend, with very few exceptions, to certain kinds of animals--pets. Most animals, in most cultures, are not mourned, and the question of an animal afterlife is not contemplated at all. Mourning Animals investigates how we mourn animal deaths, which animals are grievable, and what the implications are for all animals. --Dust jacket.
Contents: Introduction : Who Goes to the Rainbow Bridge? : Conceptions of the Afterlife for Non-Human Animals / Margo DeMello -- Photo Essay : Discarded Property / Shannon Johnstone -- More than Just a Bag of Bones : A History of Animal Burials / Ivy D. Collier -- Mourning the Sacrifice : Behavior and Meaning Behind Animal Burials / James Morris -- Killing (Constructed) Horses : Interspecies Elders, Empathy and Emotion in the Pazyryk Horse Sacrifices / Gala Argent -- The Issue of Animals' Souls within the Anglican Debate in the Eighteenth to Nineteenth Centuries / Alma Massaro -- Photo Essay : Hartsdale Pet Cemetery / Liza Wallis Margulies -- All the World and a Little Bit More : Pet Cemetery Practices and Contemporary Relations between Humans and Their Companion Animals / Micha Piotr Pregowski -- "To All that Fly or Crawl" : A Recent History of Mourning for Animals in Korea / Elmer Veldkamp -- Freeze-Drying Fido : The Uncanny Aesthetics of Modern Taxidermy / Christina Colvin --^