While many hope for miracles in the new year, one family got theirs for Christmas after a new pet--their grandkids' new Shih Tzu puppy named "Scamp"--had escaped from the yard and been fatally hit in a car accident. It turns out there is life after death. It isn't just humans that wake from the dead.
Yelm resident Reta McKinlay was watching over her grandkids' new puppy when the small dog instead found a way out through a fence in the yard, in a horrible accident where the animal was hit in the street by a driver. The car accident left the terrier-Shih Tzu pet in bad shape. The dog was bleeding but, worse, the accident had been fatal. The pet wasn't breathing. And car accidents involving dogs are usually tragic and deadly. The Washington grandparents prepared to lay the pet to rest, phoning the six-year-old twin girls to tell the kids that their puppy, dubbed "Scamp", had gone to heaven. The girls' grandfather carefully wrapped the puppy in a blanket and protectively placed the dog's body under a wheelbarrow -- placed so it wouldn't be disturbed by animals before morning burial.
And that turned out to be a very good thing. As it turned out, the dog's body did need to rest in peace. Just not for eternity.
No burial was needed. When the twin's grandfather returned for the body it was still there. But it was sitting up. It hasn't been cheap, but life is priceless. $3,000 later in veterinary bills, Scamp is still alive and living up to his name in 'mischief'. And if it all sounds unreal, it has happened before -- in fact, with humans.
For people that have nightmares of being buried alive, you may want to tell family members responsible for burial arrangements to bypass the nails -- at least for a bit. It hasn't happened yet in the U.S. but, across the world, people continue to pop up from circumstances that led everyone else to believe they were dead. And they may well have been.
It really surprised people last June in 2011 when a Russian woman died twice after waking at her own funeral service -- the shock triggering a fatal heart attack. But a Brazilian family got a true Christmas gift in 2010 when a 88-year-old woman came back to life, waking up in her coffin a full two days after she'd been declared deceased and sent to a funeral home. And, just this past July, a 50-year-old dead man woke alive in South Africa after the corpse had been sitting in a morgue for 21 hours. Fortunately for "Scamp" the dog worked a little faster on recovery time, because he wasn't destined for a funeral home.
A dead dog coming alive isn't the first bizarre occurrence for the city. The Washington spot with a population of less than 7,000 is also home to the scene where Yelm cops or sheriff tased a naked man after sex on a lawn. Welcome to Yelm. If Stephen King is ever lacking for material, it's the untapped source.