One of my pet rats (the current oldest, Chiba) died today, and I took him out to bury him. I figured I'd put the grave near the site of the last one I buried, but when I got out there, I found that the loose dirt in that grave was removed and the hole was empty. That's never happened before. o_0 I guess a fox or something made off with the body. In any case, it saved me from having to dig in dry clay. I put the newly deceased into the empty hole and covered him with soil. At first, I thought it should bother me, but it makes no difference how a body is going to re-enter nature's cycle. Is a fox any less noble than worms and insects?

Anyway, I joked that if this body vanishes, we'll just reuse the same hole in the future -- like a sacrificial altar to the forest spirit. (I also joked that perhaps it wasn't a predator at all, but the empty tomb was a sign of the second coming of rat Jesus...)