Cemetery

We have had a variety of pets of the years. We felt that they taught about life and birth and death. We had a lizard who kept having his tail bit off by the cat. He finally committed suicide by slipping into the toilet.
Then there was the famous, to us, garter snake who was forever getting out of his tank and just appearing in the most unexpected places. If Ruth came home and he was 'out' she would stand on her bed and holler until he was found. He, too, had an untimely demise when we had him outside at the garage sale, hoping someone would love him and take him home. Seems he got too hot and just died.
We had the parakeet who did marvelous tricks on his swing. That is , until the day he got the wire in his beak and out the other side. Jon had to carefully remove it and we were all shocked that he lived. But he never did tricks again.
But, in the end most all died and we would have a funeral and bury them in our backyard.
Perhaps, the most tragic was the death of our Irish Setter, Freedom. Because she lived up to her name and refused to stay home when we were gone, we have to chain her. One day she was tortured by the nasty cat next door and she tried to get at him by jumping over the fence while still chained up. In the process she hung herself, to the great dismay of us all. We buried her too in our backyard, though now I realize we should have had her cremated before we did so.
All this about our previous animals came to me because we seem to have a houseful again. We are bird sitting for a friend. And we had already, our faithful dog, Buddy and our new Beta fish, Mr. Tumnus. I hope that no funerals are in the immediate future.
One final thought on funerals:
Just as we had our own animal cemetery, believers should have a cemetery in which to bury the faults and failures of their fellow believers. Just as our pets were numerous, so are the faillngs of others. As the new year approaches, let's vow to use that cemetery often.
Chew on that for awhile.