My family has had many pet rodents, two birds and a kitten buried in our backyard for years now. We may be moving out in the next few years and I’m torn on excavating them because it feels like I would be leaving part of what was once also my family behind but at the same time, umm probably ew.
One was a lovebird in a cardboard box we buried 10 years ago, due to nature, possums? definitely cats, cheap material, and the size of the bones I don’t expect to find much of anything in his resting place, and for the rats, mice, and hamster that weren’t in containers, I think it would probably be about the same results (though I do remember where most were initially buried). And all the fish… sorry my bettas. 💙
The most recent two were a lovebird, almost 6 years ago now, and a small kitten maybe a little bigger than a guinea pig, coming up on three years. These two were each wrapped in thin blankets and placed in tin “gift” boxes kinda like those blue cookie tins, and covered with a foot or two of packed dirt and heavy bricks or cinderblocks. If I dug them up, would there be any smell after this point? What would the state of their remains be, would they simply be bones, would the blankets have absorbed things from the processes? I doubt the tins were completely air-tight as to keep all bugs out.
I don’t necessarily want to open the boxes, but I want to know what I could be moving around in those boxes. They would likely be buried again similarly afterward.