Baby Duck

Dave notes that bodies can be disguised ... covered with refrigerators, sod, etc.

Here's a toy doll baby covered with toy duck pajamas.

Most towns have hospitals. The hospitals have nurseries for the babies. And usually there is the aroma of a Kentucky Fried Chicken across the street, or at least nearby.

My friend, Ron worked as a maintenance man at a hospital. His wife was a nurse. Ron served in the Army before he married, during the Vietnam war. I was in the Army about the same time. One of the guys I kept bumping into always looked so sharp and neat I finally asked what laundry he used. He explained that the laundries were not capable of high quality clothes care, that he did his own. He said that he would show me how if I wanted. It turned out that he did wash, starch, and iron his own clothes very meticulously. He had to look perfect at all times because he was a member of the Honor Guard. He would march in parades, perform guard duty outside the offices of dignitaries, and carry caskets at military funerals.

Ron, on the other hand, was not in such an esteemed position. He was the body bag man. He was kind of a logistics guy, making sure the bags coming in off the planes had tags and got transferred to the right places.

I preferred my job in the signal corps to either one of those jobs.

Later in life, when Ron was in maintenance, I was in charge of the bags - but not body bags, trash bags. I had a job with a garbage company - municipal waste disposal.

Ron explained that he was involved with waste disposal also. The hospital had an incinerator that sometimes didn't work perfectly. They would save up the miscellaneous body parts in a refrigerator until there was a load for the gas-fired incinerator. Part of Ron's job was to shovel out the ashes. But frequently the incinerator just didn't get hot enough for long enough and there was just cooked pieces. On TV, they say cooked people smell like chicken. Ron never commented about the odor.

The body is shed as a butterfly sheds its cocoon. The spirit enters a new form.

Sometimes I prefer to think about ducks!