{"id":8006,"date":"2017-05-03T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spookymoon.com\/wp\/?p=8006"},"modified":"2017-05-03T01:34:36","modified_gmt":"2017-05-03T05:34:36","slug":"aspin-hill-memorial-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spookymoon.com\/wp\/?p=8006","title":{"rendered":"Aspin Hill Memorial Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Aspin Hill Memorial Park<\/a> is one of the oldest pet cemeteries in the nation. As it happens, it’s also close to where I now live in Silver Spring, MD.<\/p>\n

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Mickey’s owners are interred in front of their beloved terrier’s mausoleum.<\/p><\/div>\n

I spent a gorgeous day there last week, walking the rows and taking photos. \u00a0Lots and lots of photos.<\/p>\n

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All kinds of pets are buried here, though it’s often hard to tell from the stone. This one’s easy, though.<\/p><\/div>\n

There are some famous critters here, including a few pets belonging to J. Edgar Hoover, and “Jiggs,” the terrier who played Petey in Our Gang. Napoleon the Weather Prophet was a white cat who predicted rain by putting his head down between his front paws. He was never wrong.<\/p>\n

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Napoleon wasn’t taken seriously until he predicted the end of a drought.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The Jiggs up.<\/p><\/div>\n

Founded in the early 1920s, over 50,000 pets are interred here, a few with their people. Parts of the cemetery are quite overgrown, and would have been impassable later in the year.<\/p>\n

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Yes, there are stones under the log.<\/p><\/div>\n

I would agitate for cleanup, but I’ll be honest, I love an unkempt cemetery. The overgrown parts are less treacherous than some of the front areas where graves have collapsed and not been filled in. Watch the ankles.<\/p>\n

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The stones move through time west to east. Name trends come and go. Numerous Ladies and Butches give way to Popeyes and Wimpies, and collies named Lassie and Laddie.<\/p>\n

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There must be a well around here somewhere.<\/p><\/div>\n

Lots of Happies and Princes, but only one Prince Happy.<\/p>\n

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We Rate Dogs would approve<\/p><\/div>\n

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Amongst the hundreds of prosaic Spots and Busters, some names stand out.<\/p>\n

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Bonnie got a raw deal<\/p><\/div>\n

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Some stones tell stories.<\/p>\n

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And some are sweetly sentimental.<\/p>\n

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I got a little misty here<\/p><\/div>\n

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There are dozens of small statues, and some more impressive ones.<\/p>\n

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And speaking of impressive…<\/p>\n

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You think you love your cat?<\/p><\/div>\n

I was enamored of the photo stones, of which there are many. \u00a0Frosty is my favorite.<\/p>\n

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I’ll leave you with the last of my favorites, though the number had to be winnowed considerably. You can see the entire, unprocessed photoset on flickr<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Aspin Hill Memorial Park is one of the oldest pet cemeteries in the nation. As it happens, it’s also close to where I now live in Silver Spring, MD. I spent a gorgeous day there last week, walking the rows and taking photos. \u00a0Lots and lots of photos. There are some famous critters here, including […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historically-spooky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spookymoon.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spookymoon.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spookymoon.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spookymoon.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spookymoon.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8006"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/spookymoon.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8047,"href":"https:\/\/spookymoon.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8006\/revisions\/8047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spookymoon.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spookymoon.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spookymoon.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}