Another open letter

Dear neighbor,

I know you are the one person on my street who "walks" your dog by not putting a leash on the beast, and walking on the sidewalk while he runs wherever he pleases. So I am going to assume this is your fault.

Your dog crapped in the exact geographic centroid of my front yard.

Now, I wouldn't have so much of a problem if it had been at the edge - or if it had been on that useless strip that exists between the sidewalk and the street (which the city technically "owns," but which I am apparently responsible for mowing, edging, and weeding).

But instead, he went in the middle of my front yard.

You must also understand that I don't own a dog. Nor do I own a cat. Nor, even, a turtle. (I do not have pets partly because - and I am sure you are aware of this because you seem to watch the activity of everyone in the neighborhood - I am rarely home during the daylight hours and it does not seem fair to a pet to spend its days alone in a house or staked out in a back yard). So I do not expect to find random piles of poo in the middle of my yard.

I also might take this moment to remark on the dog's diet. Whatever you are feeding him, I think it contains too much insoluble fiber. You might try using canned food some of the time rather than exclusively dry.

At any rate: dog crap. Middle of my yard. I don't own a dog. I often get home in the evening as or even after the sun is going down. Those things do not make for a happy combination for me.

I was lucky this time - I happened to get home before it got dark and I saw the little cloud of flies that had gathered over the mess.

But now, you see, I am faced with a dilemma. I do not own a "sharpshooter" type shovel, or an appropriately non-stick garden shovel, or other tool that would work for removing the pile from the geographic centroid of my lawn and depositing it - I am not sure where. I do not own a compost pile because (as I am sure you remember) of the Renter Fiasco of 2003, where we all wound up with rat infestations because someone chose to rent a house on this street to a group of individuals with no talent for hygiene. So I really have no place to put the waste. And I do not wish to get close enough to baggy it. And I am not putting it in my trash; the hardworking garbage collectors of this city do not deserve to have to meet stinky dog poo at 8 am when they are doing the pickup on our street.

So, either I have to try to find a place to which I can move it, or I must leave it there until it decomposes. Which means I cannot mow that patch. And I know, because of the many times you have slipped me cards for Eugene n Jorge's Lawn Service, that you don't like the way I keep up my yard, especially the frequency (or rather, the infrequency) of my mowing. (I will observe - have you seen the house at #415 on our street? That is a family that does not mow frequently enough. At its tallest, the grass in my yard is less than 4". That is not a crime. And I will remind you: I often leave the house before dawn and return after dark. And I don't quite trust Eugene and Jorge, even if you use them...there's just something about getting a business card with two phone numbers crossed off and a third written on the back that doesn't inspire confidence in the businessman.)

At any rate: I do not wish to come close enough to your dog's leavings to remove them to my yard, even if the place I could remove them to existed in actual fact and not merely as a theoretical construct. So I will not be mowing that patch, probably for the rest of the year.

The other option, of course, is for you to come and retrieve it. I doubt that will happen, though. I also expect to find future piles because it's my experience that if someone doesn't bag their dog's waste, they never will, unless they're "persuaded" by a law - which we don't have on the books in this town.

So - although you feel you can deliver all kinds of unsolicited advice to me (oh, and I didn't appreciate the recommendation that I cut down my pecan tree; that tree provides shade which helps keep my house cooler in the summer. Just because it drops leaves and twigs on the lawn of the rent-house you own next door doesn't seems like a justification for killing a perfectly healthy tree), you cannot be bothered to either prevent your dog from taking a dump in a place where the unsuspecting homeowner may well step in it, or bag the creature's waste. I think that is extremely unfair and I consider myself justified in ignoring any and all of your future "Martha Stewart-ized" suggestions that I hire "people," or that I remove important landscape elements, or that I use large quantities of toxic chemicals to make my lawn more cosmetically appealing to you.

Because dog poo is, I think most people would agree, even less cosmetically appealing in a yard than some clover is. And as I remember, it was because of the clover in my yard that you thought I should unleash numerous toxic herbicides on my lawn (and, by extension, on the surface water in the area, the air, myself, and all other living things coming into contact with my lawn).

So, bug off. Don't presume to tell me how to clean MY stuff up, if you can't be arsed to clean up your dog's stuff.