i have a dead frost dragon corpse appearing at hearthfire and falling out of the sky at various other locales. its not bones but the whole dragon right before you absorb its soul. i opened the console...targeted the dragon and typed "disable". was this the right way to handle it?

it looks like it wasn't

Disable means the object doesn't render. It still 'exists' though it can't be seen or interacted with.

A better way is select the object and enter the command markfordelete first, then type [b]disable[b].