Somewhere Rover the rainbow

A matchbox coffin for a fly who once lived in an office; a headstone for a messenger pigeon; a snail who 'lived life well'... a new book documents unusual memorials for beloved animals

- Anesha George

snail, a cow and a once-annoying fly have all been memorialised in death twice over — first in graves and tombstones, and now feature in Paul Koudounaris's new book on such shrines, Faithful Unto Death.

"The truth is, people can form a bond with almost any species," says Koudounaris, a photographer from Las Vegas. The idea for the book came to him during a visit to a pet cemetery in California, a decade ago.

There, a dog that had died 40 years earlier still had flowers on his grave. Over and over, gravestones said "My best friend" or "My only friend". "That moved me profoundly."

He began to do some digging, and found more moving stories. London's oldest urban cemetery, for instance, can be traced to a Maltese dog named Cherry, who died in 1881. His owners didn't want to toss his body into the Thames or send it to a rendering plant to be reduced to tallow. So they asked the gatekeeper at Hyde Park if they could bury him in the garden outside his cottage.

Soon, other grieving pet owners were using the little plot too. It still stands (though there have been no new burials here since about 1900).