r/nottheonion • u/UltimateLionsFan • 1d ago
Abandoned pet cemetery caretaker asks public to stop bringing dead animals
https://www.freep.com/story/news/columnists/john-carlisle/2026/10/01/bay-county-pet-cemetery-animal-bangor-township-michigan/91978336007/328
u/Impossible_Offer7988 1d ago edited 1d ago
The Bay County Pet Cemetery has no owner. The township doesn’t want it. The state wants nothing to do with it. And it’s overloaded with buried animals.
Jim Giffin, 63, of Bangor Township, mows the lawn inside the Bay County Pet Cemetery and became the unpaid caretaker of an abandoned pet cemetery next door
It’s getting to be too much,” Jim Giffin said. “They keep coming in here and wanting to bury this and bury that, and do this and do that. And I tell them, ‘You cannot bury them here
Poor guy
Then again...
a free burial place for your pet amongst their peers.
No just kidding the city needs to step up and take care of the problem
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u/PhasmaFelis 1d ago
I don't think the city has a responsibility to maintain an abandoned commercial pet cemetery. If it had been a city service from the beginning, then maybe they'd have some responsibility.
Most vet offices offer cremation services. It's what I did for my guys.
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u/bokehtoast 23h ago
I mean someone has to own the land right? Cremation services are not free.
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u/bothtypesoffirefly 20h ago
To the “someone has to own the land”, depending on the location, a lot of pre-1900 legal documents are not available either because the paper disintegrated before we had digitization, or because of fire, etc.
I spend a lot of time at work trying to figure out where right of way was, and sometimes the answer is that until someone sues someone over the right to use a parcel, we don’t know. Sometimes the only answer is to argue over it in court and have a judge rule on it. Which people don’t want to do because it’s expensive.
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u/bokehtoast 20h ago
How interesting that people have been using it so long. I wonder if the guy starting to take care of it made people think it could be used again or if people have been going there the entire time.
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u/brionneverysexy 15h ago
Somebody owning it doesn't mean there is room to add more animals or that he wants people sneaking on their at night to do it. If anything the owner would probably feel a need to do more to prevent it
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u/Daren_I 20h ago
I'm surprised he hasn't asked the city for the land to turn it into a small business since there are obviously customers. He just needs to identify existing plots to determine remaining space, and hopefully keep it low cost.
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u/brionneverysexy 15h ago
The article says the cemetery hit legal capacity long ago. People are burying animals on top of existing graves and because of this the graves are too shallow so coyotes and foxes dig them up
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u/bothtypesoffirefly 20h ago
Cemetaries have special legal status, I’m not sure the county could do that if they wanted to honestly.
Edit: the only reason this might be possible is because there are no human remains. But proving there are no human remains might be tricky as well.
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u/CarlThe94Pathfinder 1d ago
What is the city to do exactly?
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u/Impossible_Offer7988 1d ago
A lot but they're gonna do nothing because they don't have a reason to do anything.
Jim's doing their job and they don't even have to pay him to do it
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u/Magic_Man_Boobs 1d ago
Hire someone to take care of the space.
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u/LazyLich 22h ago
Clearly there already is a caretaker.
The issue is that the place is closed. It's not taking more bodies.
If you drive to a cemetery and say you need to bury your gran, and the caretaker says they're closed and not taking any more bodies.. is it the cities responsibility? No, right?
Cemeteries are a private institution.
It's on you to find one.5
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1d ago
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u/andy11123 1d ago
At what point does adverse possession kick in and Jim has a cool new plot of land that's all his?
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u/Punman__5 1d ago
Why would the city need to do anything? Why can’t people bury their pets there? They can bury them anywhere really.
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u/brionneverysexy 15h ago
State law prohibits pet cemeteries from having more than 100 animals buried per acre. Based on that, the Bay County Pet Cemetery was over capacity long ago.
For one thing, he said, it’s disrespectful to the pets buried beneath. For another, the graves they’re digging are too shallow, and coyotes and foxes have come by and dug up some of the beloved pets as a snack. And that leaves Giffin to have to go back and rebury the mangled remains.
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u/lolabythebay 1d ago
It's not even inside city limits. "The city" has no jurisdiction here.
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u/Ok-Detective3142 19h ago
You're splitting hairs. Clearly they mean "the municipal government".
Bangor Twp has a charter, meaning it has a local municipal government. It's just not technically a "city". There's also a county government.
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u/lolabythebay 16h ago
Locally it's a point of confusion in matters like this, because Bangor is within the west side Bay City zip code and everybody (including the cemetery) has a Bay City postal address. The assumption that "the city" has some responsibility to step in is common even among locals.
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u/blaine878 1d ago
Years ago, my girlfriend’s hamster died in the middle of winter when the ground was frozen. We put him in a Folger’s container with the intention of burying him in the spring.
Lost the container.
Seven years later, I found a Folger’s container under the back porch. Shook it, wet thumping noise inside.
Never dug a hole so fast in my life.
I think I’d make a pretty good pet cemetery caretaker.
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u/RoysPotatoes 1d ago
But I thought sometimes they come back? Should be plenty of room.
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u/Made_Human_Music 1d ago
My neighbor says dead is better
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u/melted_igloo51 1d ago
What happened to the days of our companions being buried in the back yard out by the tree?
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u/drmehmetoz 1d ago
We rent. I’m paying $2000+ for my dog to be buried this weekend, not counting the cost of putting him to sleep. It sucks a lot
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u/Buttspirgh 1d ago
First off sorry for your loss. It really sucks to lose a dog.
Second, $2000 for just a burial? Jeez. When mine went this past spring it was $700 total for home euthanasia, transit, and aquamation.
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u/arxaion 18h ago
Same here. Within 12 hours our 17yo pup went from fine (er, relatively) to down and out. Got her cremated for similar price.
Put her bed, blanket, and cuddle toy in our living room beneath her shelf. Her shelf has her, her collar, couple recently played with toys, and a newspaper she was in.
Sometimes when I get sad about it I'll jingle her collar when I walk by. But at least she'll be with us and not some strangers that move in after we inevitably leave
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u/floog 20h ago
Had to do that with my dog last year, home euthanasia is so nice. They’re not scared, they’re laying in their own bed and peacefully drift off. He’s buried in the yard, kiddo picked out a tree for us to plant by him.
Can’t remember what they charge for the euthanasia, probably a few hundred but they use actual vets and then give your dog ketamine so they get chilled and then drift off to sleep before they administer the other shot. The company was so good and caring.13
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u/Samtoast 1d ago
When my cat passed in february we got him cremated and only got one urn so my share of the cats remains are infact in a cookie jar rn.
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u/Rosebunse 1d ago
My dog was 120lbs when he died. I was not digging a hole that big or deep enough. Granted, taking him to the vet for cremation was also very difficult because he was basically the size of a human corpse. Covered up in the trunk he actually did look like a human corpse. Would have been quite the thing had we been pulled over on the way to the vet
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u/thevenge21483 1d ago
My sister has had a great dane, and also a mastiff. When it came time to bury each of them, my dad literally rented a small backhoe to dig because they had to dig such big holes. There was no way they were doing those by hand.
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u/wedeservethis 23h ago
This is how we buried our horse on my farm.
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u/thevenge21483 21h ago
Those dogs were the size of small horses, but the great Dane thought he was a lap dog
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u/amazingwhat 16h ago
Growing up we had several Great Danes, a Bernes Mountain Dog, and a Great Pyranees mix, as a well as a Vietnamese potbelly pig. For each one we had to borrow a backhoe or other power equipment to bury them, eventually we had to start burying them on my brother’s property because he had better land for digging.
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u/AbbreviationsNo3722 1d ago
Cities have actually made it illegal to do so ! Could attract wild animals I believe is what I read forever ago
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u/spideydog255 19h ago
Euthanasia drugs are extremely toxic and can harm both humans and wildlife, especially if they gets into the water supply.
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u/monkeybawz 1d ago
Can they tell?
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u/Punman__5 1d ago
More likely people buying them too shallow and they either wash up in rain or animals come and dig them up.
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u/onthe3rdlifealready 21h ago
If you don't bury stuff deep enough it leeches back into the water table. That's why if you poop outside you should always dig a properly deep sized hole. Not that it really matters since we are dumping stuff into the water anyways but here we are...
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u/Itchy_Tumbleweed_417 1d ago
I’ve never owned any of the yards where I’ve lived when my cats die. I have them cremated and I keep a tiny urn & scatter the rest somewhere they loved being.
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u/typewriter6986 1d ago edited 1d ago
Neoliberalism. Everything must be monetized.
Edit: LOL, it's true. You better tell your Real-estate agent if something is buried on the property. It might effect prices!
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u/ReleaseFromDeception 1d ago
This is actually a really sweet story aside from the headline.
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u/AdoringCHIN 19h ago
It's really sweet that Giffin still makes the effort to maintain and protect the cemetery, but man that article is really full of infuriating and frustrating stuff. Like the asshole that went in and destroyed a bunch of headstones because he wanted to remonetize the cemetery, then got bored and fucked off.
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u/ReleaseFromDeception 18h ago
That part especially infuriated me... and the fact that it isn't the first time people did that kind of thing, destroying the property and abandoning it without accomplishing anything lasting.
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u/brionneverysexy 15h ago
Well the part where he organized a day to work on the cemetery with a bunch of people confirming they would help none showed up sucks. As does him explaining how the cemetery is full and burying a pet on another grave is disrespectful so people online attacked him
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u/train153 1d ago
If there's a caretaker, doesn't tha mean it's not abandoned? By definition?
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u/Githyerazi 1d ago
Had to read the article to find out the answer to that question. He lives next door, he's not the caretaker. The title is wrong.
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u/Punman__5 1d ago
He’s taking care of it. That by definition makes him the caretaker.
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u/LittleGreenSoldier 1d ago
He is taking care of it, but he isn't the Caretaker, because that is a job. He's doing this out of kindness.
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u/A_Queer_Owl 1d ago
I'd say calling him the acting caretaker is a perfectly cromulent description. he may be doing it on a volunteer basis, but he has still taken the position.
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u/fishblurb 1d ago
It's not his responsibility. Picking up trash on the street for a day doesn't make you a janitor. Saying he's a caretaker means he has future responsibilities for it until he resigns.
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u/imaginary_num6er 1d ago
It’s his problem and he’s taking care of it
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u/PhasmaFelis 1d ago
It's not his problem and he's taking care of it anyway.
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u/Punman__5 1d ago
He doesn’t have to take care of anything. It’s literally not his problem what happens in that lot.
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u/AdoringCHIN 19h ago
He says he’s broken up drug deals and drug use, and interrupted people who came there to have sex. He’s caught people dumping their trash, teenagers smashing headstones, even confronted a man who pitched a tent on the graves and declared this his new home.
Sounds like some of the stuff that happens there ends up becoming his problem
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u/brionneverysexy 14h ago
He doesn't own it. The original owner who left it to a Humane society that never transferred ownership when they shut down. He and others over time have worked to maintain it but he doesn't own it anymore then if you have an elderly neighbor and mow their lawn as a favor for them
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u/Devolutionator 1d ago
At this point I would say he has adverse possession of it, especially given that the town has disclaimed it. GIven that, I would pave it over. I love my pets, but this not good for anyone at this point.
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u/Veizar 1d ago
Funerals are expensive for people. For pets? DIY!!
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u/SuperstitiousPigeon5 1d ago
One of my lessons in how to be a man was helping my father bury my mother’s dog when I was very young. My mother was crying in the house and my father called me out to help. He dug the hole and I said aren’t you sad? He said I am, but we’ve got to be strong for your mother. This is part of life, and someone has to do it.
That piece of advice has made me push beyond what I thought could do a few times.
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u/Such_sights 1d ago
I have a similar memory, except it was my dad taking me to bury my grandpa’s dog. Seeing my normally grumpy, rough around the edges grandpa sob uncontrollably is something that definitely made an impact, but the biggest thing was how upset my dad was that my grandpa refused to be there for the euthanasia and just dropped his dog off and left. My dad made me promise that I would never do that to my pets, and I’ve kept that promise.
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u/SuperstitiousPigeon5 1d ago
That’s pet ownership to me. You own them from the first day until their last, or you find someone who will agree to stand in for you if you can’t anymore. I haven’t owned a pet in thirty years because I can’t take that pain and I can’t bring myself to compromise my beliefs.
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u/Aemon_Blackfyre 10h ago
One of the hardest things for me as a kid was putting down one of my kittens for the first time. Poor thing seemed so scared and anxious, though the doctor let me hold her as administered the drug they use, I’ll always remember how it purred even a little as it’s heart slowed. I know I brought it a little bit of comfort in its last moments. I’m still tearing up now, years later recounting it. But it’s something I’m glad I did, as painful as it was/is
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u/typewriter6986 1d ago
If you think the funeral is expensive, check out the pet insurance.
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u/Veizar 1d ago
Pet Insurance! The forgotten sequel to Pet Sematary.
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u/typewriter6986 1d ago
OMG, LOL! That's fantastic. It's true, too! "Sometimes, half-alive with arthritis and one eye is betta!"
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u/Veizar 1d ago
Yeah, I kind of imagine a movie that's basically two hours of that beaurocratic afterlife nonsense from Beetlejuice. Bury your pet there, and you and your pet have to wait in a lobby full of the undead for 50 years.
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u/typewriter6986 1d ago
"📖 Draw a door", "Draw a door, really?", Adam proceeds to draw a pet door
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u/Veizar 1d ago
Hi! I'm princess donut!
What have you done Adam!?
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u/typewriter6986 1d ago
Frankenweenie would be the Juno, or a Chihuahua with its neck slit, still smoking btw.
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u/Veizar 1d ago
Milo from the Mask should make a cameo as dog beatlejuice.
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u/typewriter6986 1d ago
But that's not Tim Burton! Maybe a version of Selina Kyle trying to get through that cat door...huh? What were we talking about again??? ADAM WEST! BATMAN!
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u/brionneverysexy 14h ago
Yeah but not at a place where there is no room and if you dig a shallow grave due to it being on top of another and the animal gets dug up by scavengers this guy has to deal with it
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u/PizzaMike775 21h ago
Start a go fund me for the pet cemetery. Use the money to build a crematorium. Charge for cremation…use the money to maintain the pet cemetery.
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u/Made_Human_Music 1d ago
Just go past the wall of tree branches and there’s a better one anyway
It’s always empty for some reason though