The Lizard's Funeral

Here it is finally; the story of the lizard's funeral.
As a custodian in a rural elementary school, I take care of about half the school (head start, kindergarten, first grade, fourth grade, and fifth grade plus some other stuff). When working around kids this age there is always something new going on. As I have mentioned elsewhere in this space, I don't have any kids myself, and I have only been at this job for one full school year. The younger kids are really a trip. They have not yet been molded into a uniformity of thought and action that destroys spontaneity and imagination. My favorites are the kindergarten tots. In some ways they often seem, to me at least, like willful little adults who haven't yet learned to read or reason, but nevertheless have their own agenda and are by golly stickin' to it. I found one little girl carrying a book back to the library, very upset and on the verge of tears. I asked what the trouble was and she replied (as close as I can recall) that she had mistreated the book and had to go to the librarian to face the music and dance. Well, I have had some experience with this girl when she found herself on the wrong side of the rules. She was the sort of kid who thought misbehaving, and the consequent punishment, was all a part of going to school and took her "time-outs" with good cheer. This episode with the library book was different; she was in genuine distress. So I had to ask her what the big deal was. Her reply "*teacher* says my mom may have to pay for the book and (here come the tears) I know she just doesn't have that much money!" Now in rural southwest Colorado there is plenty of poverty to go around, but I didn't think this girl's mom was in dire straights. I asked how much she thought the book cost. She said "I don't know, but it's a whole lot! Look!", and ready with more tears showed me the back of the book and pointed to the ISBN number. A very large number indeed! I explained that the number she was looking at had nothing to do with the price, and that the book almost certainly cost less than ten dollars. The girl seemed doubtful, but her usual good cheer returned in an instant. That's how she is. Gloom has no chance against this kid.
But I digress. One of the kindergarten classrooms had two pets. One was a hermit crab named, oddly enough, Hermit. I don't know if anybody reading this has ever had such a pet, but I will tell you for nuthin' that a hermit crab is not the most active of pets. He lived in a dry aquarium with another empty shell (his second home ((they're very popular in this neck of the woods)) ), some food, a couple of rocks and some water all on top of an inch or so of sand. I never saw him move, and I was in that room at least three times a day every day of the school year, and I always checked. Never a twitch. He did move about though. He would be in different places and some of his food got eaten. The main evidence of his motion though, was the lovely track he left as he traveled, a series of identical half circle ridges in the sand about a quarter inch deep. I know not whether he took any pride in the perfection of his trail.
The other pet in that classroom was a lizard with the astounding name of Mister Lizard. I don't know Mister lizard's origins , but I suspect that he originally lived outside on the school grounds or somewhere close by because lizards of his type are quite common in the high desert. He was a sand colored specimen about ten inches long, about half of that was his tail. Compared to Hermit, Mister Lizard was a real live wire. He lived in very similar digs to those of Hermit with the addition of a small branch to climb on and of course, crickets. (Crickets are kind of a minor plague in our school. I'll bet I have vacuumed up about a half bushel of cricket husks this summer. They are everywhere in the building.) I would check on the lizard when I checked on the crab as they lived next door to each other. I actually saw M L flick his tail a few times and every now and then I would catch him bobbing his head (I think they do this to enhance depth preception).
One day toward the end of winter (I believe it was early March) one of the kids from this classroom came to the door of my janitor's closet, which is right across a tiny alcove from the classroom door, and announced that she and her classmates had a big favor to ask of me, and would I please come into the classroom for more details. I assured her that I would try to help if I could, and showed up a few minutes later as promised. When I arrived there was a tumult. Voices of four and five year olds in a babble: "Mister Lizard died!" "His head caved in!" "His eye popped out!" "We have to have funeral!" "Yes, Mr Birch, will you make a funeral?" and more along those lines. At first, I was kind of dumbfounded. Then I realized the logic of it. Who better to be the grave digger than the custodian. In for a penny, in for a pound. I agreed to dig the grave, lead the procession, inter the casket, and come up with a little ceremony. The teacher and I agreed that the ritual would commence at about 10:45 the next morning.
After a little thought, I decided that Mister Lizard's mortal coil should moulder beneath the creaky limbs of the apple tree that the the kindergarten adopts as its own every fall. This tree is quite old and gnarly, its untrimmed branches are a confused tangle, and its bark is scarred and scaly. It does however produce an abundance of fruit, probably because it sits near an irrigation ditch. All in all this tree is a pretty fair example of heaven's generosity and the toughness of things that survive in the high desert. So I picked a spot and dug a hole about a foot square, and about a foot deep. I then gathered a bunch of small stones about three to four inches in diameter. The next morning at the appointed time I arrived at the classroom to find that Mister Lizard had already been sheathed in a Ziploc bag and, along with letters of farewell and sorrow placed in his cardboard casket. Let the funeral begin. I led the way with the pall-bearer behind me and the rest of the class following. We crossed the service driveway and went up the small rise to the apple tree. There we all gathered around the grave: seventeen or so young children, their teacher, and an ersatz funeral director, to mourn the passing of a reptile. I took the casket from the pall-bearer, placed it in the hole, and covered it with about one fourth of the dirt I had taken from the hole. then I asked the kids to all take a turn putting more dirt in the hole, and once the hole had been filled asked each one step on the dirt to tamp it down. Then the stones I had gathered were passed out and the children used them to build a little cairn as a grave marker. As the class went about these activities, I talked a little about how what we were burying was not a lizard at all but the stuff that remains when the life leaves a lizard and the lizard is no more. Much to my surprise they all seemed to get it. They were somber but not distraught. One little girl mentioned that the apples would probably be very tasty this fall. The teacher and her charges went back to class and I went back to sweeping.