We have been composting quite a lot of meat-type things lately: dead rats from the basement traps, dead birds the kids find, stew remains from the kitchen… So far, I have had zero problems with animals digging them up (I expected it, as we have two big dogs and a lot of wildlife, so I’m as surprised as anyone), and it is impossible for us to bury anything two feet deep: you hit water at about 10 inches. All our garden beds have to be built *up* to keep them from flooding in heavy rain.

So I dig a hole as deep as I can reasonably make it– up in the beds, that’s about a foot. I put in a shovel of charcoal, then drop in the rat or the turkey giblets nobody will eat, or whatever, then another shovel of charcoal on top, then a little mound of sand over top so I know where to transplant the pumpkins to, later. I think the charcoal might be hiding the smell! Fortunately, we have a lot of it– we are *still* cleaning up dead trees from a hurricane more than two years ago: I’ve just been turning them into charcoal as I go, and stripping off the rotting bark to mulch the garden. Free carbon! We also seem to have an infinite supply of large rats in the open laundry space under the house so… bonus time! The snap traps have been a good investment ;)

Once I transplant pumpkin vines around these pits, it takes ~2 weeks for the roots to find the carcass. You can tell when it happens– the leaves go from being a sickly yellowish I’m-growing-in-sand-please-help-me color to a deep bluish green almost overnight, and then it’s off to the races!