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Charlie Hatton
Watertown, MA
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In front of our house, we have a porch. Under the porch is our trash barrel. And beside the trash barrel is a little plastic shopping bag in which we collect small baggies full of dog poop.
Not that we ever intended to collect baggies of dog poop, especially. I mean, I collected stamps once, and the missus looks for any of those newfangled fifty states quarters that she's missing, but when you start hoarding plastic-wrapped dog turds as a hobby, then something's gone terribly, terribly wrong in your life. You're either clinically insane, you desperately need fertilizer but can't trust 'the man' and his bourgeoisie commercial stuff, or you've gone and convinced yourself that these particular piles of poodle plop look like Elvis or the Virgin Mary or that girl that used to be on Punky Brewster, if only her skin were a little crustier and her eyebrows were made from bits of grass.
"This is the kind of stuff you don't get in the Wall Street Journal, people. I hope you're treasuring this."
Clearly, these options are not mutually exclusive.
Our situation is less disturbing, for the most part. It's simply that there are no public trash receptacles on the dog's regular snurfling routes, and we're good people and bag our pup's poop when anyone might be watching. And when it's convenient. And we remembered to bring a bag. And we feel like carrying a steaming fresh pile of turd six blocks back to the house because the dog evidently takes the old saw 'Don't shit where you eat' very seriously. I think she's doing her best not to shit within the radius of the distance to the store where we bought her food; forget about where she actually scarfs the kibble down.
So, we collect bags of dog poop. Under the porch, in a plastic shopping bag beside the trash barrel. When it's time to take the trash to the curb for pickup, the poop sack gets tied up and thrown in with the rest of the trash, no problem. It's a fine system.
Usually.
See, the door to the area under the porch sticks sometimes. In the summer, the door expands into the frame, and in winter, it occasionally freezes shut. So those little bags of terrier turd intended for the shopping bag get left on the little path of sidewalk leading to the door. Come trash day, a little more assembly is required to gather everything up, but it's no particular hassle, as opposed to yanking on the door for ten minutes trying to pry into the poop bag holding area. It just turns out to be easier to drop the baggies on the sidewalk and deal with them all at once.
Good. You're now caught up with the various vagaries and peccadilloes concerning our pooch's bowel movements. This is the kind of stuff you don't get in the Wall Street Journal, people. I hope you're treasuring this.
You're also up to date with where I was last night, as I trudged under the porch with a full kitchen trash bag, heaved it into the barrel and prepared to lug the barrel to the curb. I found the designated poop sack, saw that it was empty, and returned to the sidewalk outside to retrieve a week's worth of canine kaka. There were four little baggies there, maybe five; I reached down to scoop them up, and...
Nope. Wouldn't budge. Not an inch.
It seems that the door is not the only thing that had frozen during our recent cold snap. In some sort of unfortunate freeze-thaw-refreeze cycle, the bags of dog turds had apparently sat on a small pile of snow, melted through, and resolidified in what was now an inch-thick slab of ice.
So instead of collecting baggies of dog poop in a plastic shopping bag by the trash barrel under our porch, we're now displaying our collection of dog poop baggies in a tasteful arrangement on the sidewalk near our mailbox. Perhaps I should put out some wine and cheese, and a sign-up sheet, in case the mailman is interested to know what our next gallery installment will be. I'm sure that would go over well:
'Please leave your email below and we'll notify you when more of our dog's biological waste is available for viewing. And don't miss our special showcase of 'Things the Mutt Has Horked Onto the Carpet'. it's a rugstaining groundbreaker!'
This simply can't be good. Now I either have to fix the porch door or find a new mailman. Or duct tape the dog's ass shut, which would seem to nip the whole problem in the bud, but I'm apparently not 'allowed' to do things like that. I see. I can play tug-of-war with bags of frozen crapsicles on a Sunday night and endure the mail carrier's pointed looks until spring thaw, but I can't do anything about the source of the problem. Fine.
The next time the dog takes a shit, I'm putting velvet ropes and spotlights around it and charging for private viewings. And if one of the turds looks even remotely like Elvis, I'm charging double.
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Perhaps the Museum of Bad Art in your state would be interested in an installation piece. I mean, it's not typically what they show, and they're weary of velvet Elvises (Elvii?). So this might draw a nice crowd for them.
Ah, thanks, Monkey! One does practice the alliteration while one lies awake in a cold sweat at night.
And Jenn, I'll have to see whether I can have my 'objet d'poop' accepted by a museum in the area. Though frankly, from what I've seen, most of them already have enough crap inside.
Not frozen, though. So there's still a chance!
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That's got to be one of the best titles yet, my love!