Buttons, Floppy, and Queenie will be sorely missed

What’s a desperate woman to do when there’s no place to pee for miles? Pull off onto a remote country road and turn onto a grassy gravel path looking for a deserted spot. 

And there it was, the reward for too much coffee: A rumpled sign for a pet cemetery. Just like a pet dog, I took care of my business in the grass by a tree. Then I followed the trail over a grassy field past overgrown trees laden with green apples to a large shady corral freshly mowed. There were touching and funny little headstones: Sheri, “Our Little Care Bear,” Molly, “Daddy’s Precious Little Teddy Bear,” Eleanor, “a Purrfect Companion,” Tinker, “Sassy Cat.”

Then there was Butchy, Valley Bulldog, 1997-2008 “Like Losing the Perfect Son.” Ouch for their human children.

The little graves were marked with familiar pet names: Duke, Sheba, Patches, Brandy, Rascal, Mittens (Bless Me Kitty), Tattoo, Puddy, Wiley, and two Busters.

Queenie had a big headstone decorated with with carved dog bones, sea-themed sculptures and plushy toys, well chewed. I took a close up of her bear (at right) with legs torn off and stuffing spilling out, but it’s too gruesome to publish. 

Here’s one of my favorites: Floppy lived one year but Melissa loved that hare, and her parents (I’m guessing) helped her through her grief with this memorial.

Well, I know that doesn’t tell you much about this trip to Nova Scotia except for that one little charming and eerie place outside of Lunenberg.

I have been having a fine time meandering from Yarmouth to Halifax along green-lined roads, admiring the cute towns with both pretty and working waterfronts. 

The food has been excellent: a seafood chowder, Montreal meat sandwich (corned beef, really), poutine—a combination of fries, gravy and cheese curds that sounds like a mess but tastes divine. I want to eat it every day while I’m here. 

I could be telling a lot of anecdotes—about the lacy B&Bs I stayed in, the helpful bus driver in Halifax who answered my inquiry by telling me to hop on so he could take me to a better transfer point, the bike rider who insisted on giving me a ferry ticket in Dartmouth (across from Halifax–the Brooklyn of Nova Scotia) because it was my first day. 

This trip is delightful and there is a lot to share. 

But I really wanted to show you the pet headstones. 

• Nova Scotia
• Pet cemetery