Today I spent two hours in my backyard raking slushy dog shit, leaves, soggy cardboard toilet paper cores, and dog toys into several large piles. Another time I might sweeten my language but when you’ve been raking shit for hours it’s not poop or feces or doo or crap; it’s shit. And it is foul.
Cleaning it up is a loathsome job.
Every year I tell myself that I will keep up with the dog waste patrol during the winter. I intend to, every week without fail, go out and clean up each individual dung deposit and place it into a little garbage bag which I will then tie up tightly and include with the rest of our household garbage in the weekly pick-up by Tony Soprano… er, I mean Waste Management.
Every year I kid myself. Heck, I can barely keep up with yard work in the summer. I’d gladly let the grass grow for a month before mowing if we had a better mower. In a neighborhood full of renters, an unkempt lawn is the least of the sins. But in the winter there is just no way to get the job done. News flash (and I have to re-learn it every year): when it is cold and snowy, the shit just lays there. There is no motivation to clean it up; there is no shit-scooping muse.
And physics works against the shit scoopers in the winter. Poop is created at dog-temperature which melts the snow it falls into which freezes into ice which becomes a part of the landscape until it thaws. Joyce, a fellow dispatcher, tells the tale of her sister-in-law who follows her own dog around in the backyard when she lets it outside to poop. The sister-in-law then not only scoops up the poop while it is fresh but (and Joyce swears she is not making this up) wipes the dog’s ass. I can hardly be bothered to get dressed when letting my little treasures outside to do their business. Many a time our neighbors have had the opportunity to see me through my sliding glass door to the backyard wearing nothing but flip-flips and jockey shorts. At 3 am on a work day there is no shame.
Consequently, each year at break-up I must clean up the backyard with a marathon raking. Most years, with this year being no exception, I break my cheap Home Depot rake in the process. Wet leaves and ice are heavy; rakes are not made to shovel. I never learn. I will always go buy another cheap Home Depot rake. I cannot justify spending a large amount of money on a rake. Computer gadgets or electronics, yes. Landscaping equipment, no. Penny wise and pound foolish, maybe.
The yard muck is now in several piles not because I lacked the will to finish the job. The contractor bag I filled with the first pile of debris weighs at least 50 pounds and there are probably four more bags I could fill. And the rake is broken. So I’ll let them be and see if they dry on their own and weigh less in a couple of weeks. Likely the winds will kick up and blow the leaves all over the yard again and the remaining mounds of crap will fester and never get completely dry due to April showers. We’ll see.
When I became an adult I marveled at how my parents were able to restrain themselves from killing me and my brothers because we invariably broke anything of value in the house sooner or later. In my yard today I had an epiphany. They kept us around to rake the shit come break-up. I guess they were pretty wily after all.
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