Pooper Scooper Meeter Greeter

Published on: 3/19/2011

The calendar says that spring does not officially begin until tomorrow but I would take exception to what the calendar says.

Spring has been here for awhile and as evidence of this I offer you the following-

My neighbor dusted-off and rode his motorcycle early last week.  One of my colleagues at the day job is bringing his bike to work now.

And as the melt continues and the glacier of ice and snow in my little yard recedes all sorts of dog poo is being magically revealed.

It's pretty hard to clean-up after your pooch when the snow is accumulating because it tends to get buried before you get to it.  And as the snow builds you end-up with a hidden strata of doggy doo lurking beneath the deceptively pristine layer of white.

Those deposits are ticking time bombs.

With the melt they're revealed in all their glorious odorousness.

The nice lady at the Fleet Farm checkout register knew immediately of my spring thaw as I paid-for The Big Scoop.

The task of clean-up ranks right up there with the summer I worked as a hired-hand shoveling horse manure.  By July I had reached the middle of the mountain of festering feces and things got pretty rank.  Mom made me hose-off in the backyard before I was allowed in the house.

Nevertheless, spring brings more than motorcycles, thawing poopsicles and crocuses.

It brings tennis balls too.

I've been taking Girlfriend down to the Honey Creek Parkway to play fetch with a tennis ball after work.  It's really mindless but the dog loves it.  Now that the snow is receding we're gradually rebuilding the tennis ball inventory.  Balls that were lost in the deep snow over winter are revealing themselves.

We leave the house with a single ball and if we're lucky we return with two.

Here is an interesting fact.

Hardly a daily ball tossing session goes by without someone in an automobile pulling over and asking for directions.  I'm not kidding.  Sometimes it happens a couple of times in a row.  And people ask for directions to locations all over Tosa.  Are there this many lost people wandering about?  How is it they end-up at 70th and Honey Creek?  Does this mean the 70th Street bridge reconstruction is Tosa's Bermuda Triangle of lost drivers?  Why do they ask me?  Do I look like I know anything? 

If you like meeting strangers, exercising your dog and being helpful - take Rover over to the soccer field just south of the bridge reconstruction project and I guarantee you someone will come along before too long and ask for directions.

Bring a poop bag to pick-up after your canine friend and help yourself to a tennis ball.