Tuesday 23 June 2009

I like dogs: not so much their owners

I took advantage of a recent sunny day to take Monkey to a playground. Ho-hum. Like most playgrounds these days, all the slides and things are surrounded by a thick layer of woodchips - designed to break the fall of a falling Monkey.

Monkey decided to spend his time digging through the soggy woodchips to see what he could find underneath. I don't mind - boys will be boys. When I was a year older, and at kindergarten, I organised a squad to dig a pit in order to trap one of our teachers. We were busted laying the camouflage covering over the top.

So I sat back and watched Monkey hacking his way through the woodchips, and after a while, I decided to go and have a closer look at what he was up to.

When I got to him, the smell hit me. At first, I thought he had failed to warn me and had done the world's largest crap in his pants. Then I kicked over the mound of woodchips he was playing with.

Hmm. Barker's eggs. (If you don't get that, think of an animal that barks, and the things that it lays). Big, yellow barker's eggs, just below a layer of woodchips that had been suspiciously mounded up by human hand.

The way I see it, some bastard took his (or her) dog into a gated playground, let the dog crap in the play area, and then instead of picking up the crap, kicked woodchips over the top of it and sodded off.

Great. Just what I needed. A Monkey covered in dog crap, and me with no wipes or anything to get it off.

If we had a water tower in the vicinity, I'd be opening fire on non-dog crap collecting owners by now. I don't blame the dog for crapping where it did - how is a dog supposed to know not to crap in a playground?

At least I hope it was dog crap. Then again, I wouldn't put it past some of the dero junkies from the housing commission estate down the road to do something like that.

3 comments:

kae said...

ex-nextdoor neighbour (ex-husband called her "Mutton"), had a King Charles Cockerspaniel. Poor dog was walloped with a lump of wood, you could hear it crack on the poor dog's pelvis, when the dog was naughty. Poor thing. (It was a shit of a dog.) She used to walk the dog on the estate when she went for her walk.

Stupid cow would let the dog crap on the side of the road. She'd drag it off the road and let it crap just in the grass on the side. Yeah, it's a big estate, but if a car's coming you have to get off the road and the last thing you want is to be stepping in one of her dog's barker's nests.

She had OCD. I'da loved it if she stepped in her own dog's crap.

RebeccaH said...

Back when we had dogs, and took the daily plastic-bagged newspaper tossed to our front lawn, there was no problem. Slip the free bag over your arm, pick up the doggie-gift, tie it up with a knot, and put it in the dumpster when you got home. No more dogs, no more newspaper, and certainly no patience with the squeamishness of the post-modern pet-accessoried idiot.

kae said...

RebeccaH
In the Big Smoke (City of Brisbane and the City of Ipswich, close to my little town), it is illegal to walk a dog without a leash and it is illegal to walk a dog without carrying a plastic bag. You get fined if you have no plastic bag.

I dunno who gets fined, I've seen some dogs around work (in the city) taking a dump while their owners look the other way!