WHAT TO DO WITH A BAG FULL OF POO!

Walking my neighbor's dogs while she is recovering from some broken bones has reminded me once again about how inconsiderate, nay, boorish, some people are about cleaning up after their dogs. When people move in this apartment complex they sign a lease that requires them to -- well, to be graphic about it, pick up their dog's poo after the dog does its duty. We all know that we aren't going to get tossed out if we don't; we all know there are no dog poo police on patrol. But out of common decency, most of us understand that it is something we should do.

I am appalled by how much poo I see lying around on the grass in other people's yards. It is almost a given that if you see a person walking his or her dog after dark, that person is not picking up after their dog. (Reminds me of the old bible verse about men loving darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil, although I do understand that this is more or less overkill when it's applied to dog poo). Nevertheless, I'm sure you get the point.

Dog poo we'll have with us always. So it was with a hearty laugh that I read on Pawnation.com about the Park Spark Project in Cambridge, Massachusetts. According to this website:

People put dog poop into an air-tight container and it begins to produce methane, an ordorless, colorless gas that is a major part of the natural gas many of us use in our homes. The methane is then piped into a street lamp that continues to burn as long as park visitors and dog walkers dump the poop into the digester and turn the hand crank to stir the mixture....The goal of this interactive project is to not only show how dog waste can be recycled into something practical but to also spark ideas about other ways to use the heat and light created by the poop that had been filling up nearby trash cans.

Now I understand that in our complex if certain people are not going to pick up after their dog and deposit the baggy in a nearby trash container, they certainly aren't going to walk down to a central location and put it in a special container and give the wheel a turn. But I do think that this is a very clever and useful idea and having it in a dog park in a big city is probably the best place for it.

Well, I don't know that anything can be done about the miscreants in our neighborhood short of starting a drive to make them wear a Scarlet sandwich board with a big POO written on it when they walk their dog. There are lots of things written into our leases that are not enforced, so it just behooves those of us who do obey the rules to walk lightly and carefully when we walk on the grass.