Playing With Dead Things: The Mummification of Beavis I, Part Six: THE FIGHTING.

And this is where Beavis is right now.

The incline is so that the disgusting juices of the process flow away from his dirty little body.

In a metal cabinet, next to his guts. And he'll stay there until the twelfth of June, just like Herodotus said he should. But then, Herodotus, the Greek historian who catalogued the mummification process, was talking about mummifying people, not rats.

If this mummification were hell-bent on being 100% authentic, I wouldn't have disembowled Beavis. I would have plunged him head-first into a cauldron of liquified resin, wrapped him up when it hardened, sold him as an offering, and called it a day. Classically, animal mummies weren't quite the exhaustive process that human mummies are, unless they were holy bulls or crocodiles or whatever. And after a lifetime of destroying my furniture and urinating on anything that had nothing to gain by being urinated on, Beavis was clearly not holy. But I decided to fudge the rules for him. He was a good enough critter. He did his best.

No, officer. These are my rat's guts. Honest.

And here's what was left when everything was said and done. Some soiled cardboard, a bloody knife, a stained dishcloth, a fine dusting of natron forming a haze in the apartment, and that unmistakable inside-a-rat smell the incense couldn't quite seem to fully conquer.

Now, we wait.