All things have energy. In a literal sense this is known by way of e=mc^2 where all matter is just energy contained in a thing.
When an animal body dies in nature, it is consumed by its environment, and becomes a part of that environment. The individual atoms that made up the body of the animal are spread like a wave away from the body. This is carried out by other organisms, and physical transformations (ie even if a body was away from all other organisms, environmental effects would still spread part or all of the body).
All things have energy. A plant reaches toward the sun, its energy is obvious. A rock hums slowly to itself.
This energy, the life of the being, in part, could be considered the soul of that thing. If we were to say that part of this energy is the soul, some aspect of energy that is not easily transfered from cell-to-cell but through some other means, where does it go?
When an animal body dies in nature, it is consumed by its environment, and becomes a part of that environment. The energy of that body spreads away like a wave. It is taken on, by unknown means, by those things that need it, want it. Between the time it is not part of a thing and it is simply energy by itself, it is ineracting with all other energy around it. This is what I call the Ether, the space where energy is spreading and interacting, thinly or with concentration.
