Cemeteries, Pet

It has often been observed that most of what we know of early civilizations is based on their funerary artifacts. One wonders what inferences will be made by archaeologists in the future when discovering hundreds of pet cemeteries from early 21st-century America, some with owners interred next to their animals. Indeed, future archaeologists may collaborate with historians to explain how the emergence of pet cemeteries in the late 19th century and their proliferation in the late 20th century are the result of sociocultural trends. Interestingly, researchers will not find any mortuary attention being given to dead animals a century earlier because these geographies reflect new moralities toward nature and the animal kingdom as well as profound alterations in familial and friendship bonds.

As is the case for the human elite, pet cemeteries and memorializations originally were limited to the animal elite and to the elites' animals. Near the track of the Kentucky Derby at the Old Friends Thoroughbred Memorial Cemetery is the final resting site for the equine stars of the race track. Among those interred at the Kentucky Horse Park is Man O' War, whose 1947 funeral was attended by 2,000 mourners. Similar species exclusivity can be found in Tuscumbia, Alabama, where since 1937 can be found the Coon Dog Cemetery. Reserved for working canines, at the Broward Pet Cemetery in Plantation, Florida, is the Service Dog Resting Place, which houses the remains of seeingeye, drug detection, and search-and-rescue dogs.

As there exist national cemeteries for military veterans, so too for their pets. At San Francisco's Presidio is a cemetery for pets of army families stationed there. Some claim it originally was a burial ground for 19th-century cavalry horses or World War II guard dogs. Nevertheless, for the last half of the 20th century until closing to new interments, it remains the final resting place of not only dogs and cats but parakeets, hamsters, lizards, and rabbits.

The animal elite have also been buried alone in small consecrated sites. Ham, the first chimp in outer space, is buried in the front lawn of the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico. In the same state Smoky the Bear was interred beneath a memorial plaque in the Capitan National Forest. Mitzi, of television “Flipper” fame, is buried beneath a dolphin statue in the courtyard of Santini's Porpoise School.

North of New York City in the affluent areas of White Plains and Scarsdale is the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery & Crematory, which advertises itself as the nation's “first and most prestigious pet burial grounds.” Established during the height of the [Page 177]Gilded Age and Victorian sentimentality in 1896, this final resting place of over 70,000 animals promises to “help keep the memory of your pet alive.” Among the creatures there buried is Chips, who served in a number of General Patton's campaigns and alone took control of an enemy pillbox by grabbing the throat of the gunner and terrifying five other occupants into surrendering. He is joined by less accomplished creatures from higher status households, whose memorializations could be perceived as examples of conspicuous consumption. Thorstein Veblen, in developing the ways in which the economic elite demonstrate their wealth, included the notion of conspicuous waste. Veblen's work was published at the turn of the 20th century, when new waves of immigrants were struggling to feed their families and having to bury their dead in pauper fields, and the rich were interring their dead pets beneath exquisite monuments.

...