Todd Anderwald, despite his German-sounding surname, belongs to one of the sixteen Polish families that settled in Bandera in the mid-19th century. He is already of retirement age and looks just like a doppelganger of Santa Claus—an open, friendly, jovial man with a long white beard. On a daily basis, he works laying bricks, paving streets and driveways. He also earns extra income as an animal gravedigger. He once told me how his unusual job works. When someone’s horse or bull dies, people from Bandera and the surrounding areas call him. As Todd explains, animals cannot be buried just anywhere. The remains must not contaminate the groundwater. They must also not be burned.
- People used to do that, but now it’s not possible. A black smoke will appear in the sky, and immediately the fire department will show up. There are heavy fines for that. We look for the right elevation where we can dig a grave. These are large animals, so we need an excavator.
Todd doesn’t run this kind of business officially. It’s more of a favor he does for people, for a fee. Someone has to do it.
- Recently, we buried a horse. The owner was very sad. She took it hard. She showed me where to bury it and then left with her husband. They didn’t want to watch because they were very attached to the animal. Sometimes people don’t want to be involved in the burial, and other times we have a small ceremony. It depends.
Horses used for recreational riding are animals with which people form emotional bonds. Sometimes they ride them for pleasure for over twenty years, treating them like family members. It’s different with bulls. They are used as a source of income, so they are treated like livestock. Bulls can be worth a lot of money, so the death of a bull can be a significant financial loss for the owner.
- A long time ago, I had to bury a large bull. It was insured. We couldn’t bury it until the vet arrived. He had to perform an autopsy for the insurance company. I dug the grave with a bulldozer, but they told me to wait, and trust me, it was a hot day. Flies, the smell, the heat – it was getting unpleasant. But we had to wait. Finally, the vet arrived. He needed to take some samples for the autopsy, so he asked for my help… So, the bull was already lying in the pit, the vet came over and showed me that I needed to grab the animal by the hind leg and pull it away from its body. I jumped into the pit and held the bull as he told me. It was a large animal, weighing about a ton. I placed its hoof on my shoulder and pulled it by the leg. The vet jumped into the pit and cut open its abdomen. He needed to access the intestines. I only heard a whistle and “Oh my God,” if you had smelled the odor that came out of his belly, it was unbearable. I just turned my head and waited for the doctor to tell me I could let go. As soon as he finished, I jumped out of that pit like I had been burned.
Todd has a great sense of humor, so while telling this story, he laughed uncontrollably, but it was clear that when it was happening, he wasn’t laughing at all.
- “That was the end, did you bury him after that?”
- “No, that was just the beginning. Then, at the vet’s request, we had to cut off his head. The vet needed a brain sample. He tried to do it with medical tools, but it was a huge bull. Really huge. A strong, tough, massive skull, and there was no chance of doing it with his tools. He struggled and struggled but couldn’t crack the skull. I wanted to help, so I brought him a small axe. That’s when it worked. I won’t go into details,” Todd laughs, “but it worked. He got his sample.”
- “A bloody burial…”
- “Unfortunately, we had to do it to check if he was, for example, poisoned. After that, I said a blessing and we buried him.”
- “You blessed the bull?”
- “Yes, I always say a blessing like that. My wife also says blessings over dead animals. Someone has to do it. Since I do it, I try to do it with respect. What happened with the bull was beyond me. Normally, things like that don’t happen. I come, dig the hole, put the animal in, and bury it. There’s one thing you need to remember in this job. When you have to bury a ton-weight bull, you dig a hole that you think will fit him, and then you make it two times bigger because there’s no way he’s going to fit. I once had to bury a horse. It had been dead for three days and stiffened up. The owner was very upset. She had had the horse for 30 years. I came, and I made the mistake of digging too small a hole. I only realized that when we put him inside. His stiffened legs were sticking up more than a meter above the surface of the hole. They were so stiff that nothing could be done with them. The owner was crying. To her, it was the funeral of a friend. I waited a moment, we said a blessing, and I told her, ‘Honey, you need to leave, we’re going to have to deal with this, you shouldn’t be looking at this.’
- I didn’t want to tell her what I was going to do, and she definitely shouldn’t have seen it. Eventually, she left, and I got on the bulldozer and had to break his legs with the shovel. Then we buried the poor thing. You don’t usually tell stories like this too often, but that’s life, Arthur,” Todd smiled.