I'd just stick it in the compost. It's a tiny amount.

I don't want to attract more animals than already come. We have cats, raccoons, and possums, and mice.

Just bury down into the pile. None of the wildlife will know :-)

My piles are too small.

Your 3' deep pile is too small for a scant cup of salmon??

Or stick it in a hole in the garden. It's such a tiny amount it really isn't going to be an issue wherever you put it.

Yes you can bury it. Legend has it that native Americans buried small fish under their seeds. At least that's the way the pictures in my American History textbook showed it. But who knows. :-]

I add lots of fish to my compost. I do a lot of ice fishing so at least three times a week i have the remains of 25 bluegills, crappies and perch. I just throw them on top of the pile and cover with leaves. I get the same critters but my pile is out back so I just let them mix it up some. In the spring (now) when it starts to thaw, if i dig in, there will be thousands of red worms just below the fish remains.

When I was briefly married, I lived in Harpswell, Maine 40 feet from the ocean. One morning my husband and I woke to find our entire front lawn covered---and I mean covered---with flapping fish---mostly pogies, but also haddock, bluefish and some small sharks. It was a huge disaster for people who survive renting their seaside properties, because the smell of rotting fish persisted for at least a month, and visitors who arrived, promptly left.

When my husband kissed me goodbye and left for work that morning, he pointed his finger at me, and said, "Don't you dare bury any of those fish in our garden!" The rest is history.

If you have unwanted critters feeding in your compost piles, then you have bigger problems than what to do with a cup of salmon.

To get rid of the animals you have to either process the compost in rodent-proof containers (like an off the ground tumbler) or get rid of them altogether. If animals are a problem, the compost piles are the cause. Composting isn't for everyone, especially in close quarters in urban and suburban environments where you have to be mindful of the impact on your neighbors. You may be causing more problems than you are solving.

There are urban options; I mentioned the tumbler (though good ones are expensive), and there are also closed upright compost bins. Worm bins are a good way to process vegetable food scraps indoors.

But not composting at all is also a healthy option if it helps eliminate rats and other animals that go on to affect your neighbors.

At the moment the compost is in an open pile with no container. A wire mesh cylinder would keep out some animals and if you give it a lid held down with a rock or something you shouldn't have a problem.

The only animals that I have seen come close is a cat, which nipples on the fresh greens I add on top of the pile or that didn't get mixed in well. I haven't seen any signs of an animal disturbing the pile.

I listed which animals I know I have seen walking around my backyard before I even attempted composting. They come to rummage through our garbage or rip up my lawn like they did last year looking for grubs. I want to make sure I don't send them hunting in a compost pile or for some fish I stupidly decide to bury before asking for advice.

So...(You might as well sit down, cross your ankles, and light your pipes.)...

another thing happened once. After my divorce, when I was living with my mother, I filled my mother's compost bin with a different, smaller, menhaden wash-up. She looked outside the next morning to see her Golden snugged up tight to the bin, walking around it, rubbing, with his neck and shoulders pressed against it. Exactly like you might see a dog do when it finds something especially disgusting on the ground in the woods. Afterwards the dog had an odor and texture to his fur that got mentioned ad nauseam for months.

Another time---I hesitate to bring this up because it sounds so implausible, it makes me look like a teller of tales---I put a bucket of whole fish in my bin. I was leaping-in-the-air-horrified the next morning to find the fish sticking nose-first out of the 3"x3" gauge bin, the wrinkled, gray eye sockets, accusing. Evidently some raccoon had tried to drag them out of the bin, through the mesh, and, thwarted, left this grisly scene. I wrote about that here about 21 years ago. Anyone remember? Flora?

21 years ago? Crikey. I'm not sure I even had the internet then.... but I do remember the glove in the chipper discussion.

I am by no means an expert of the caliber of annpat, but the few times I buried small fish (say, 5 oz. under each tomato plant) the results were very positive. Native americans used to do that, along the colorado river, when they had excess fish. basically, they stored the nitrogen in the field and harvested the corn fertilized by it.

I only remember that if you have fish in your compost, your compost is too wet. Something about crappie being eaten by planaria. So annpat, must have been sockeye salmon the coons were after?

tj

"if you have fish in your compost, your compost is too wet." Oh, oh. that made me laugh.

I don't remember what they were, but I remember now that their spines consisted of thorned vertebrae, and I speared myself in the garden later and got an infection..

Ouch. Another reason for composters to be up on their tetanus shots.

Some wandering brain cell has me thinking you would have used the fish scales as glitter on a compost verification certificate.

tj

"His objection, which held water, was that the smell of fish would encourage the digging up of our garden by raccoons. That was a moot point when your yard is under 9" of rotting menhaden..."

Prose that is worthy of the term 'florid'. It was such a stark picture that I thought for a second I could actually smell it. Kudos!