Rat-Copter
Dutch artist Bart Jansen looks at the Orvillecopter during the KunstRAI art festival in Amsterdam, June 3, 2012. Jansen said the Orvillecopter is part of a visual art project that pays tribute to his cat Orville, by making it fly after it was killed by a car. He built the Orvillecopter together with radio control helicopter flyer Arjen Beltman. Reuters

Everyone deals with the loss of pets differently, but a Dutch boy grieving for his beloved rat has taken mourning to new heights. Not content to merely have Ratjetoe (Dutch for Ratatouille) taxidermied, he sent the stuffed rat skyward, turning him into a rat-copter.

Pepeijn Bruin, 13, was devastated when his pet rat developed cancer and had to be put down. “I loved him very much,” Bruin told the BBC. “He always liked to be cuddled and he would run up my clothes and hide.”

To keep Ratjetoe in his life, Bruin turned to Dutch inventors Arjen Beltman and Bart Jansen, who created the world’s first remote-controlled flying cat corpse, for help. They’ve also made an ostrich fly (which the bird can't do while alive), and their next project, “Turbo Shark,” according to the BBC, will give the same treatment to a shark.

The work of this Orville and Wilbur of dead animals was highlighted in the recent BBC documentary “All Creatures Great and Stuffed.”

The rat-copter team showed off Ratjetoe's posthumous form in a video for the BBC; watch it here.

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