Burying Baby

Years ago when I was first out of school, I worked at a large mixed animal practice in a tiny town. The practice employed 5 veterinarians and a multitude of support staff. Needless to say, we saw a ton of patients.

One day, the front office put a call through from the police asking us about a patient. I told them that we could not release information with just a phone call. The policeman on the other end of the line got a little irate:

"I have bloody remains in box with your clinic's name on it. I need information on a patient named 'Baby Jones.'"

Well, that changed things a bit. The officer elaborated and it quickly became clear that, though a crime had been committed, it was not a capital crime.

An excavation company in town had large piles of dirt, top soil, mulch, and lime. They had seen someone driving around the piles and when they went out to check, the people were gone. However, in their wake, they left a humped up mound with cut flowers on top of it just next to the lime pile. When the worker uncovered the large cardboard box, he saw the words "Baby Jones" written on the top. Given the blood on the box, the flowers, and the writing on the box, he immediately called the police.

The first policeman on the scene arrived and opened the box. The first thing he noted was a large amount of blood and a body that had been cut open. He freaked out and got a little sick. The next police officer had a little bit of forewarning so when he looked, he saw the animal fur coat, making the assumption that someone buried a mutilated dead infant a non-issue.

As it turns out, the body in question belonged to a patient of the clinic that had died and the owners requested a necropsy (our word for autopsy). So, one of our fellow vets had opened up the animal to see if they could find a cause of death. When he was done, he wrapped up the body and placed in a box that had been used to ship supplies to the clinic. Hence, the police tracking the body back to our clinic.

It sounds like a good start to an episode of Bones.