Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Picking up after your dog is just the start

     Social media gets talked about as if it were one thing. But “media” is plural, and each social medium has different customs and tone.
     Facebook is familial, for instance. You can show unruly guests the gate. On Facebook I mark personal occasions: my wife’s birthday, a son home from school, in a way I never would on Twitter. Twitter is far more public and contentious, a mad free-for-all, like that tomato festival in a small Italian town where everyone is covered in red goo, flinging fruit as fast as they can.
     Then there’s blogging. I maintain a blog whose name, alas, can’t be printed in the paper. Blogging seemed edgy when I began, six years ago, ignoring the unavoidable truth that, if I’m doing something, then it ain’t edgy.
     Now blogging seems a quaint and obscure time-wasting pastime, like embroidery. A place for smaller, more trivial thoughts that have no business gobbling up the scarce real estate of a printed newspaper. Two weeks ago, one blog post began this way:
     “Tuesday is garbage day in the old leafy suburban paradise. Which makes Tuesday a better day to walk the dog, because people roll their big sturdy green garbage cans to the curb, affording me a range of disposal options after Kitty has done her business. No need for carrying the blue New York Times bag with its load of doo, not for long, not on Tuesdays. Detour a few steps over to a can, a tad guiltily, lift the top and flip the bag inside.
     “I don’t know why I feel guilty—it isn’t as if the homeowner will mind, me using their can for such a purpose. Or maybe they would. Of course they would. We can be very jealous of our prerogatives, we suburbanites, and I can imagine some homemaker gazing worriedly out her window. ‘That disheveled man, the one with the limp who is always walking that ratty little dog. He just came by and used our garbage can!’”

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8 comments:

  1. I live in the city and I too made a similar deposit into a neighbor's garbage can then continued my walk. Well three blocks later the home owner confronted me and was quite upset. So I never did it again to that guy but obviously some people do not like it. Just one of those things. I didn't think nothing of it but others do.

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  2. Generally speaking the trash cans aren't ours. They are a public utility. Still we should be respectful to our neighbors .

    Here in the city this guy was remodeling his house without a permit and didn't get a dumpster. spread the trash a little bit in every neighbors can . Somebody called 311. They came out and ticketed every can for having construction debris in it. No action against the douche bag doing the remodel. LOL

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  3. The neighbor's feelings aside, the ecological problem is with disposal of the plastic bag. The best practice for the good of the earth would be to turn the shit into a flower bed and hose the bag out for reuse.

    Tom

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    1. Is dog shit "bad" for flowers and plants? What about cat shit as fertilizer? Don't they both contain toxins? I grew up with dogs, but I've always had multiple cats for the last forty years, so the odor of "kitty doody" doesn't offend my nostrils the way "dog doo" does. Concentrated cat pee is the hardest to deal with...all that ammonia could easily substitute for pepper spray or tear gas.

      Hosing out our orange Cleveland Plain Dealer bags would be a waste of water and effort...they are wafer-thin and not really reuseable. On the other hoof, those blue bags, which appear to be from the New York Times, appear to be quite sturdy and substantial, and they would probably last a while.

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  4. I was the one who commented (on May 2) about the dog crap that "simmers in the summer and festers in the fall"--and really stinks up the can. And about how my driveway is short, so that it's easy for passersby to deposit the poop in my trash can.

    I also mentioned my commercially-made signs that read 'Don't let your dog dump here!' and 'Poop is not fertilizer!' for the lawns and the fences, and that I need another sign for my trash cans, because too many folks will just pick up the pieces (uh-huh) with only a tissue or a paper towel, and toss THAT into the can. Not only is that both annoying and disgusting, but it's a lot harder to dispose of, and often necessitates hosing out the can. Hot fun in the summertime? Not exactly. And it's what pisses me off the most. A bag can easily be dealt with...a paper towel full of crap--not so much.

    I ended my rant with "Your dog, your poop, your house. Bag it and take it home." And here I will add that old saying about how the right to wave your fist ends where my nose begins...same thing for dog poop. Your right to dump your dog's waste ends where the lid of my trash can begins. Yes, the municipalities technically "own" it, but if it's sitting at the head of my driveway, then it's sitting on my property.

    Why can't the dog's human companion simply double bag it, stroll home, and deposit the mess into his own trash can? When it cooks in my waste can on a steamy day, it smells offal.

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  5. I don't mind the occasional dog dump on the lawn. Dog owners can leave it there, my emotional support rodents enjoy the feast. It gets the lady across the alley with her two yapping little dogs upset. Calls me the rat man, very apropos.

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    1. For various reasons, there's no fence between me and my neighbor for the last several years. We live in row houses so our yards are right next to each other. His dog, roughly the size of a small horse, goes in his backyard most of the time, and would bounce over to my yard to find a clean spot to crap; his backyard is maybe 12x12 so there's crap all over the place, and he cleans it up maybe 2-3 times a month. I had some guys working on my roof last year, and one of them cleaned up his yard. I asked him why and he said he felt sorry for the dog. So do I. I finally had to put up a barricade to keep his dog our of my yard since my many requests to keep the dog off my property have fallen on deaf ears. Love thy neighbor...I don't think so.

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  6. While we are on the shit subject, a story apropos of a topic recently visited here. At 11:58AM today I walked through the door of Jesse White's Schaumburg operation. At 12;02PM exited with my new vehicle sticker, after a pleasant exchange with the friendly clerk. There were many citizens waiting for service and many employees rendering such, a half dozen or so called to the windows during my 4 minute stay. No gaggles of state workers malingering and ignoring us.

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