By Moristotle
[The first official “poop patrol” report for the Collington Farms development in Mebane, North Carolina, was published on December 22, 2017. During the year ending today, Siegfried and I have collected approximately 1,144 piles of poop. The number is approximate because errors are inevitable, and it is occasionally unclear whether one pile resulted from only one poop, or whether two piles were produced by a single poop.]
By the half-way point of our walk this morning (about 3/4 of a mile into it), Siegfried and I had found (and I had collected) seven piles of poop (presumably dog poop). Hot damn! We had just tied the record set only a few days ago. It had more often been four or five piles, sometimes six.
I uttered something to Siegfried like, “My god, Siegfried, how about that? Tied the record already! And you did your part!” The very first pile I collected had been his, which greatly relieved me, for he had not wanted any of his first offering of food today, which was very unusual. My wife thought it was probably because that cat had come into our yard, probably pooped, and Siegfried couldn’t help himself and had a snack. I know, it’s disgusting. But his foul gas yesterday and today seemed to indicate that she was right.
Lest you suspect you have inadvertently walked into the fictional world of W.M. Dean, I hasten to tell you that the detailed account that follows is true and factual – real facts, not “alternative facts.”
And I should explain why I’m picking up dog poop these days. My neighborhood’s homeowners association board has a Facebook group page, and it recently hosted a discussion of the number of “poop stations” we have, the consensus being that we don’t have enough of them. Apparently, dog owners generally want to go as little out of their way as possible to do their community duty of picking up their own dog’s poop. At any rate, there’s a fair amount of dog poop lying around the neighborhood.
Well, I decided, what the hell, I have no personal problem picking up someone else’s dog’s poop. I can always wash my hands when I get home. And, besides, I am a community-spirited guy; I derive satisfaction from doing my part, or even a little more than my part.
It was fairly easy at first, because I wasn’t using my cane that my doctor recommended, to reduce the risk of my falling down and breaking one of my lower-density bones. But when my wife found out I wasn’t using it, she insisted I do, over my protestation that it’s difficult to manage the cane with Siegfried’s leash, or vice versa. But of course, I said I would. And I thereafter have.
So, how to manage the collected poop? What I do is hang a larger bag (such as you get at a grocery store) on the handle of my cane, with a rubber band tightened over the bag’s loops. That’s the collection bag. And I have a second, smaller bag for picking up each pile of poop, the scooper bag. I operate the scooper bag by first turning it in-side-out over my pick-up hand so that my hand is covered with the inside bottom of the bag, and then cupping my hand over the pile of poop and closing my fingers around it. The tricky part is to transfer the poop in the scooper bag to the collection bag. I have to ask Siegfried to be still and wait a minute, while I manage this. I have to make sure the collection bag’s “mouth” is open. That’s the tricky part I was referring to.
Once I’ve released the poop into the collection bag, I use my other hand to pull the scooper bag’s opening back down, so its in-side – now soiled a little or a lot depending on the firmness and age of the poop just handled – is once again inside, where, hopefully, I won’t touch it or get any poop fragments on the handle of my cane, across which I spread the scooper bag so that I can hold both it and the handle of my cane, as Siegfried and I continue our walk.
Okay, so the collection bag now held seven piles of poop.
And, of course, the thought crossed my mind that, with half of our route remaining, maybe our chances of finding another seven piles were 50/50? And a little bit of excitement tingled in me, I have to admit. I hadn’t expected poop-collecting to be fun when I started doing it.
Halfway down the next block, there it was, our record-breaker. “Holy shit, Siegfried! A new record! Eight piles of poop.” But now we walked the rest of that block and half of the next, and nothing. It wasn’t looking good. And I was walking slower so I could peruse the grass on both sides of the sidewalk more thoroughly. Several times I bent down to examine what turned out to be a dead, darkly decomposing weed-plant. “Damn it, Siegfried!”
Ahead I saw a big rental truck, but I didn’t pay much attention to the movers. I was too intent on looking for dog poop.
As Siegfried came up to the truck, however, I looked up at the man and woman whom I supposed to be moving, smiled, and was immediately captivated by their friendly demeanor and answering smiles. They came down their driveway to join Siegfried and me, and we talked a bit. It turned out that the wife, like me, participates in the Facebook group, and she remembered the poop-station discussion. I told her what I was doing, even the fact that Siegfried and I had just set a new record.
“My daughter almost stepped in a big pile just down there,” the wife said, pointing in the direction Siegfried and I were headed.
“Is it still there?” I asked, excited.
“Probably,” she said.
“Which side of the sidewalk?”
“On the right.”
Okay! I said adieus for Siegfried and me and we took off, not neglecting to examine the grass on both sides of the sidewalk, just in case. But we had come almost to the corner (just across the street from one of the poop stations) without finding any poop, and I was fearing that the poop the woman’s daughter had almost stepped in had been taken.
Then there it was! “Sweet Jesus, Siegfried! Nine piles of poop.”
It wasn’t looking good, though, for finding as many piles on this second half of the walk as we had found on the first half. We’d have to find five more for that, and I really didn’t think we would.
None in the next block, uh-oh!
But then, “Great God Almighty, Siegfried, Number Ten!” It was a humongous pile on the street side of the sidewalk. I almost had to put some of it into the collection bag before grasping the rest, but by readjusting my fingers and squashing the poop up some, I managed to get it all in one go. The collection bag was getting pretty heavy, and it banged against the cane as I walked, making my progress a little awkward.
One more house ahead, I yelled out, “Number Eleven, Siegfried! It isn’t the Great God Almighty who has been helping us, but Youie!”
For those who haven’t been following this blog for years, I should explain that during my manic Summer of 1989, Youie Summer, I was seeing numerological signs all over the place, which I took to be confirmations and guidance from a female deity I understood to be Universal Intelligent Energy (U.I.E.), familiarly known as “Youie.” The familiar name, notice, compactly included I (Spanish Yo), you, we (the sound when spoken), and yes (French oui sounds like “we”). And Youie’s number – I was given to understand in the mysterious way that mania makes possible – was 11.
In quick succession, before we even reached our own block, Siegfried and I found Numbers Twelve and Thirteen, both piles large, but not quite as large as Number Eleven. And now I was saying to Siegfried things like “Holy Mother of God!” “Blessed Jesus!” I was really getting into it, and the title of today’s post had already formed in my mind. What fun! And to think that just yesterday I had posted that piece remembering my New Ten Commandments! It really did seem like divine intervention, so why not pretend it was?
When Number Fourteen appeared just two houses from our own, I knew I had to write this up and publish today!
You just can’t let something like this go to waste.
| Copyright © 2017, 2018 by Moristotle |
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