Halloween Countdown: October 10 – I've started digging holes, my friend

My wife's elderly rabbit Jack passed away on Monday. He was a great bunny, and Maura did her utmost to make sure his twilight years were as comfortable and enjoyable as possible, but there was nothing that could be done about the seemingly unshakable recurring respiratory illness that eventually did him in.

I was home sick today fighting off a nasty head cold, but at my wife's request, made the effort to see the poor bunster off to his place of eternal rest, a small patch of ground beneath the lilac bushes next to the patio.

It was fitting day for digging a grave -- cold and damp, with dark overcast skies. As I tried to work the spade into the rocky soil of the hillside, a murder of crows circled overhead, kaw-ing madly and adding to the cacophony of the sparrows' atonal chorus coming up from the woods past the back fence. The clang of the shovel blade against unyielding stone kept irregular time for the surreal symphony, and if I was a less rational man, I'd have sworn that some unseen force was paying attention to the grim proceedings.

I laid Jack's small, cold body in the earth, commended his soul to Frith, and covered him up properly enough to discourage disinterment by any wandering scavengers.

Afterward, while washing the mud off me in the kitchen sink, I realized that there had been two songs alternately looping in my head during the course of my gravedigging experience, and I knew I had my topic and material for today's post.

David Bowie - Please, Mr. Gravedigger (from David Bowie, 1967) - Not so much a song as a bizarre bit of spoken word ghoulishness set to a beat and accompanied by some appropriate sound effects. I first heard it some twenty-five years ago, when a local radio station decided to promote an upcoming concert of Bowie's by playing his entire discography over the course of a single Saturday. It has haunted my dreams ever since.

Throwing Muses - Rabbits Dying (from the band's untitled debut LP,1986) - Unsettling in a manner that only the band's early material can be.