A Glorious Funeral?

While spending the holidays on the family farm, a mouse and a shrew were found in traps in the cellar.  For some reason, these ended up in the care of our daughter, and by the time we heard about this, she had constructed a paper boat and was creating tiny grave goods to give our slain pests a Viking funeral.

Naturally, we did what any good parent would do.  We pitched in to help!

The funeral vessel

The paper boat, well-decorated with marker and odd bits of moss?

The boat was a sort of a paper wedge-thing that was covered in our daughter's drawings, filled with rodent corpses, a couple of paperclip "swords", a shield and other sundry grave goods.  We helped make it actually buoyant by placing it on a piece of bark.  The little one then added some moss, berries and dried out perilla.  Truly, it was the grave of kings.

The Journey to Valhalla

We added a bit of Coleman camp fuel to the paper and tinder to make sure it would incinerate quickly and lit the "ship" with a pole.  It floated very well, I'm pleased to say.  The whole while it blazed majestically, sure to hurry the souls of the fallen along to the halls of their fathers!

A solemn moment as our heroes depart on their glorious journey.

To Valhalla!

The Aftermath

We kept the ship out on the water until it burned out with the pole.  We didn't want it to drift ashore with all the dried vegetation around.  Overall, I think the funeral was fairly successful as far as such a method goes.  Obviously, a more impressive ship would be needed for complete cremation, but we had one extremely happy little girl making the enterprise worth the strange indulgence.  The mouse holes of the dead shall rejoice at the coming of the two heroes.