Deli thoughts

Perhaps this sounds weird, but when I die, I want my remains (scraps is all they are, in my mind) taken out in the middle of the woods and left for the scavengers to consume.

Probably my favorite noise in nature is an excited coyote yipping to her pack when she discovers a truly fragrant bit of roadkill.

She will roll in it.
Stuff herself to the point of bursting.
Puke it up.
Roll in that, then eat it again.
Maybe puke up some for her pups back in the den.

The crows and buzzards and jays will pick the rest of me clean. Worms and bacteria will scour my bones neat and dry.

Along the way, a robin will stop to pick at the maggots, and another coyote will pounce on the robin, scarf, regurgitate, howl, and scarf some more.

A generation will pass, and along comes a plucky ten-year old.
Scabby knees, sweaty face.
His glasses keep slipping down his nose as he grubs through the thickets upon which a suburb has encroached.
He spots a gleaming piece of ivory. What is this? A tooth! Perhaps there is more...
Upon further, furtive, frightened investigation he uncovers first the lower jaw--later the entire skull--of a human being!
Yuck!
Wait--C-O-O-L!
He rushes home and tells his mom (she will call the Sheriff's Department--they in turn, will call The News) while the kid races around the cul-de-sac gathering The Gang to search for more bones.

My verdigris-encrusted remnants are collected by the County coroner's office and shipped off to the lab for dental identification.

The kid is on the local 5:00 o'clock news. He is a HERO! Picture in the paper the next day.
No family members come forward to claim the bones.

The Sheriff gives him the skull!
Awesome.
He'll hang onto that skull for the next ten years before loaning it to his first-year Anatomy professor at college, who "misplaces" it in the permanent collection.

Sometime along the way, the ID tag becomes smeared.
My name fades.
I am tagged and replaced with a numeric counterpart.
The tag falls off.
Finally, I am just The Skull, brittle, yellow. The lower jaw is missing.
I am loaned out to a class of third-graders. They caress me and pass me around. Oohs & Ahs.
Dirty fingers. A booger is scraped in my left eye socket.
The teacher places me on the high shelf above her desk--presumably out of reach. She is wrong, and I slip from the awkward fingers of a 10 year old girl to smash on the hard, hard, floor.
I go, "Crash!"

The little girl starts to cry, but a boy says, "Don't be such a baby! It's just some dumb old skull!"
They will get married at 22.

I am a socializing agent.
Haloed.
Immortal.
Food.