False death animation

Greetings.

Units like the batrider, steam tank, and skeleton warrior don't have an animation to play after they die; their models just stop showing altogether. However, it seems that the dead units will stick around if you set them to Decay and be Resurrectable. This means that, if someone casts a spell targeting Dead near them, they might seem to appear from no where.

Supposing that I wanted them to be resurrectable, what do you suppose I could do to simulate a decay animation? I was guessing that I might try to force the model to play an animation, like death, and freeze it part-way through, and then do a game-wait for however many seconds it takes them to completely decay, and then release it.
On the other hand, I might not need to have the wait, because the model might be automatically removed after the decay period has elapsed.

Unfortunately, I just don't have much of any experience in this area. I was hoping someone here might have an idea about how the decay and resurrectable system functions, and how to use a trigger to make modelless-death units appear.