Contemplation of Disinterment

Today I dug a hole for our guinea pig, mainly because I thought it might finally be time to reclaim that shoebox-sized space in our freezer.  I would say it took me a good half an hour to dig a hole which is perhaps a foot square and maybe half a foot deep.  If I’m being generous.  The whole time I was performing this arduous task, all I could think about was all those people on TV who discover they have to dig up a body, because there’s some vital clue that was buried with it, or there’s some lost artifact in the coffin, or because the body itself is a necessary component in the spell that’s needed to save the world, and, several minutes later, there’s one or two characters at the bottom of a hole they have to jump up to get out of.  And, as I was thinking about that, one word kept recurring to me: bullshit.

Also, why do these people always have shovels handy?  Before I spent half an hour digging the hole, I had to spend half an hour locating the shovel, which I guess I didn’t put back in the garden shed from the last time we had a pet die.  If you had come to me last night at this time and told me I needed to help you dig up a body, I’m pretty sure we’d have still been digging when the sun came up this morning, and probably not in any danger of getting that nice satisfying “thunk” of shovel-on-coffin any time soon.

But perhaps I’ve spent too much time thinking about this topic ...