Let's see now...he could have been run over and squashed by an unusually heavy three-year-old on an out-of-control tricycle, he could have been impaled when a heron suffered a heart attack during flight and plummeted to Earth or he could have been gnawed to death by a pack of man-eating shrews. All ways in which he COULD have died. His chronic alcoholism is more likely to be the actual cause, however, though it does seem rather boring in comparison.