When I was twelve, my pet tortoise of six years died, presumably of eye cancer (though it was a pretty amateur diagnosis on my part). While I wept uncontrollably for my lost companion, my father struggled searching to dispose of poor, straightforwardly named, "Nofur." He had no idea of a location, if any, where my friend could be legally buried.
Family legend holds that Nofur eventually set sail down the East River, delicately wrapped in a Dagastino's grocery bag. He was like reverse-Moses, floating to his Atlantic doom.
For those fortunate enough to live in the suburbs, pet memorials often offer a cathartic experience. Enveloped by trees and nature, the bucolic American Christian suburbs can provide a satisfying backdrop for a final farewell.
"My family had a backyard so we were able to bury our lizards under our Holly tree," said Sean Youngstone, of Richmond, VA. "We had little ceremonies for each of them, complete with adorable Catholic prayers and crosses made from sticks."
And in Cape Cod, MA., an Atlantic peninsula known for its cranberries, historic lighthouses, and white people, one can provide a goodbye for the humblest of pets.
Rebecca Van Sciver of Cape Cod Massachusetts shared a similar anecdote to Youngstone's.
When her friend Tatiana needed to say farewell to her goldfish, Van Sciver helped "put him on a piece of tree bark and set him aflame in the lake...[She] used nail polish remover as accelerant, and put him out to sea in flames like the Vikings of Old."
(The goldfish could not be identified by name, though. Van Sciver does note that his title was likely Cantonese).
"We were weird kids," she concluded. Why she used the past tense remains unclear.
But these stories illuminate a tale of two cities, the curious, often- unspoken problem New Yorkers face. Without backyards, pet parents are often left searching for the proper place to let their animals find eternal rest. (And yes, digging your own Central Park burial plot is illegal).
Among frog owners, burials at sea seem to be preferred. Caroline Goldrick of Washington Heights remembered her own ordeal with her pet frog from her college years. Rhinegold's cherished life, and sudden death, still resonate with Caroline, now a circus and clowning teacher at a local Manhattan elementary school.
"My two roommates and I adopted some reptiles as a bonding experience. Pamela got a lizard. Sita got a snake... Rhinegold was great. He would sit on my computer screen, the way frogs do. It was the first Apple computer. His aquarium had a [climate] regulator in it. That's where he slept at night, at the foot of my bed. Frogs need a very specific temperature to survive."
But a northeast city, as Goldrick learned, is not an ideal environment for frogs. One night, she discovered Rhinegold, stiff as a board. It was just too cold for the little guy.
"Honestly," said Goldrick, "We did not know what to do with him. I wanted to honor him with some ritual. Some ceremony. He was only with me for 2 months, but still."
Later, Goldrick and her roommates collected at the bank of a river, and labored to respect Rhinegold's passing into the next life.
For Goldrick, the experience was certainly moving.
"I had wrapped him in some beautiful print fabric I had, tied a string around it, attached a rock to the string and threw him in the river. I actually cried. No joke. There is a picture of me with him on my Facebook page [that] I posted a couple of months ago."
After a pet dies, the ASPCA recommends freezing his or her body; following, former NYC owners can choose from a host of tri-state burial services, which can charge exorbitant prices.
Only 30 minutes from midtown Manhattan, the family-owned Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, founded in 1896, is the world's oldest operating eternal resting place for man's best friend.
Hartsdale boasts an impressive resume. It's ranked one of the top ten cemeteries in the world (including ones for humans), serves all religious denominations, and even offers irrevocable trust funds managed by independent trustees.
The L.A. Times has reviewed the grounds, noting "from the moment you walk through the iron gate, pass beneath a canopy of shade trees and take in the thousands of graves planted with pink begonias, it becomes clear that Hartsdale is not your usual cemetery."
But these services can be expensive. Hartsdale charges a general maintenance fee, in addition to the cost of burial. Extra "flower plantings, holiday decorations or monument repairs," push the price tag of a using a pet cemetery even higher.
For a cheaper option, the NYC Department of Sanitation advises:
"On your neighborhood's regular trash pickup day, place the animal in a heavy-duty, black plastic bag and put it in your usual collection spot. Tape a note to the bag stating 'deceased animal inside.' "
But for pets like hamsters, goldfish, and even chickens, this situation can be upsetting, awkward, and logistically challenging.
Many individuals struggle preparing their animal's body within the home, before even having the chance to follow Department of Sanitation policy. This, as Steven Adler of Providence, R.I., explained, can lead to familial conflict.
"Back when I lived in New York, we had gerbils as pets. One passed away, but we weren't quite ready to bury her because we didn't know what the procedure was."
To give themselves time to cope with their pet's death, the Adler family placed the gerbil's corpse in a tin container. The makeshift coffin was stored in their home's basement freezer.
But temporary solutions, for former pet-owners, can become long-term challenges.
Adler continued, "My mom is a huge procrastinator, and a few weeks later we still hadn't buried Peanut. Then, my grandparents came to visit --and my grandfather is famous in our family for his midnight snacks, [which is when] he wakes up, half-delirious, strolls to a fridge or freezer and basically just raids it. Needless to say, finding a frozen gerbil in a cookie tin was enough to shock him into being awake. Thankfully no damage was done to Peanut; just to my family."
And the law has certainly made progress towards respecting the intimate relationships between man and his best friend. Recently passed legislation in New York permits pets and their parents to be buried together, allowing for a more modern spin on the Ancient Egyptian funerary custom.
Environmental yuppies can also find refuge in compositing, recommended by the Cornell Waste Management Institute. A recent report emphasized that this strategy is low-cost, kills pathogens, and is "relatively odor free." Many veterinary offices also offer cremation, as another option.
Sometimes, the online community can serve as a resource to humans found suddenly without their pet companions.
Sites like lifehacker.com or hamsterhideout.com offer internet group pages where humans can collaborate on how to pursue the best farewells.
I got the chance to sit down with my ex-boyfriend, Julian Rosenblum, who looks back sadly on his rushed goodbye to his fish, Alpha Betta II, whom he honored with the internet.
To retroactively remember his pet, Rosenblum created a community Facebook page in late 2010. The site was a definite success, collecting 14 likes in its tenure, including Rosenblum's mother, who does PR and received a degree in Music from Yale.
To this day, the About Page continues to celebrate Alpha Beta II's life, captioned: "He's a betta fish. And he's amazing."
But sometimes, saying goodbye to pets must happen before their death.
Anna Blech of Battery Park City remembered, "The only pets I had were two frogs when I was little, which were from this company where you were supposed to get tadpoles and then they turned into frogs. We'd done the caterpillar turning into butterfly ones several times already and then we always released the butterflies.. But then on 9/11 we had to escape and couldn't bring the frogs."
A few weeks later, the Blech family returned to their apartment to find that their pets were still alive. However, Anna's parents had decided to leave the city for few months, until the neighborhood recovered. The frogs, however, would not be relocating with them.
"We left them in the hallway in their big tank in the hopes that someone would take them home...hopefully someone did."
Though I know I will never see Nofur again, I am comforted knowing that he swims beneath the deep, somewhere beyond the East River. So while I'll never know his fate, whether it be something like urban turtle soup or to eternally swim with the fishes of the sea, I am fortunate enough to have gotten a goodbye. Some of us never did.