When 61-year-old angler Peter Hodge learned that he had a terminal disease, he made a last wish that his remains be turned into ... fish food!
The 61-year-old, from Puriton, near Bridgewater in Somerset said he wanted to swim with his favourite fish in the spot where he spent 40 happy years angling.
After his death last month he was cremated in a wicker fishing basket coffin, and his ashes were mingled with 30lb of fish food.
Mr Hodge's widow Caroline and daughter Sally were the first to catapult balls of the bait into the River Huntspill to signal the start of an angling competition among Mr Hodge's friends.
Mrs Hodge, 56, said: "Pete always said that when he died he wanted his ashes to be mixed in with groundbait. He wanted the fish to gobble him up so he could swim up and down the river after his death.
You're right about animals eating ground up other animals and getting brain rot as a result. By consuming the infected tissue of a dead animal they themselves became infected. But the big difference here is that he wasn't ground up raw like a dead cow. He was cremated and the only thing left is grit and ash, and at this point his remains are probably about as hazardous as a handful of wet sand. I think that's a great way to pass on, you won't take up any space and you make some fish super happy.
Comparing some old dude's eccentric and ultimately harmless last wish to a bunch of violently murdered women being eaten by pigs kind of makes you a butthead.
I used to work on a fish farm, and I don't trust what they feed them - you eat farmed salmon? very fatty and little taste resemblance to the real thing.
technically, it should be illegal for a farm that sells product to not feed the proper feed to that product (Oh, my dog loved this farm, so I'll grind him and feed him to the pony so he'll run around here forever?)- of course there was the case in B.C. where psycho killer Willie Pickton fed many lo-rate hookers to the pigs on his farm... which someone eventually ate.
the decay cycle sped up does not sell the argument, Carl, as the normal decay of flesh takes ages longer.
and just so dude really understands his karma, a high percentage of the feed sinks to the bottom, so some of dude's "energy" will be forever enmired in lice infested muck
Either way, graveyards are a waste of space. Donate your body to science.