It’s the age old question first posed by Joseph Wambaugh in THE CHOIRBOYS. Elderly people living alone with pets have a fear: What will happen to my faithful companion, when I die?
Johnson County (Texas) Sheriff’s Office can answer. Deputies opened a missing person investigation after family members lost contact with an elderly recluse. He had apparently walked away from his rural property leaving his eighteen dogs behind.
Family members were suspicious. They pointed out he would never leave his dogs without first making arrangements to feed them. Turns out he had fed them. Deputies located human bone and cloth fragments in piles of dog shit.
It is the classic dilemma, “Is the person worried that the animals will starve upon one’s passing? Or that they won’t?”
