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Sad as it was, I couldn't help but, quite literally, cry with laughter ... only to be beaten up by my little sister for being a morbid git. Oh well ...
Needless to say, the budgies weren't the only ones to go out with a bang. After we'd given up on keeping birds, one of our cats, Nero, decided to emigrate to our neighbour's basement where, after years of pampering and chicken dinners, he, too, met his maker. One cold winter's day, our neighbour came over to bring these bad tidings. We demanded to see a body, of course. Bizarrely enough, our neighbours stony-faced reply was along the lines of 'ground frozen, too hard to dig, put cat's corpse in sandwich bag in freezer, next to peas and lamchops'. How on earth is one supposed to deal with that? Well, whatever you do, don't start giggling, and, most importantly, do not end up rolling on the floor with laughter - unless you really want your neighbours to never talk to you again. And then there was my friend's tortoise, Peter. We lost him in the garden one day. Years later we found an empty shell somewhere in the carrot bed ...
