Putting the FUN Back in Funeral

As most of you know, I work at a funeral home. If you thought that such a business would be all sadness and no fun, you haven't met my coworkers!

Enter Michael. He burst into the room one day singing, "A mortician is a person in your neighborhood." a la Mr. Rogers, at the top of his lungs.

And if my coworkers aren't acting funny, some of the situations they find themselves in sure are. Our manager and his wife arrived early for a funeral out of town to make sure everything would go smoothly. There was nobody in the cemetery so the traffic cones tipped him off as to where the grave might be. The cones surrounded a rectangular area covered with a tarp. He lifted the tarp, expecting to see hole for the grave. Instead, the tarp covered . . . a traffic sign. Luckily this apparently had been placed there to prevent people from falling into the hole that was, indeed, below it under a second tarp. He lifted the second tarp to make certain and was shocked to find what he described as the biggest, fattest chipmunk he had ever seen sitting at the bottom of the 9-foot deep grave. He knew he had to get the chipmunk out of there before the service started. He said that he could just imagine having to put the coffin on top of the chipmunk while it screamed bloody murder. He first tried pitching a few pebbles in to scare it out, quickly realizing that while the little bugger could really run up the sides quite far, he wasn't getting out by himself. Next he employed use of the straps that were there to lower the coffin. He put a few French Burnt Peanuts into a loop on one end and lowered it down, hoping that it would grab onto the strap trying for the peanuts and could be lifted out. After this attempt also failed, he was getting a bit desperate. Time was ticking by and the pastor had arrived to find our manager and his wife 'playing' with the gravesite. After some explanation and discussion between the three of them, it was decided that one of them would have to go into the grave after the chipmunk. Our manager's wife lost the coin toss and shimmied down a board into the 9-foot hole. Apparently as she started in, the chipmunk went ballistic and started squealing his fool head off. She finally made it all the way down and was able to chase the critter back up the board she had used. Hooray!!! The only problem now, was that she was stuck in the bottom of this hole and she was a fairly short statured person. Our manager and the pastor had to use the straps to lift her back out. Thankfully, the service itself went off without a hitch. It's just all in a day's work for a funeral director.