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| Not my family. A recreation of someone else's family of smokers |
A few years ago, I wrote about a Thanksgiving tradition in my family: I always cooked the turkey, and my relatives - all smokers - would come to my house and complain about not being able to "light up" in the house. I don't smoke, and on cue, I would invite them to pursue their habit outside on my deck where I always made sure there was comfortable seating around a centrally located ashtray. If the weather was poor and it was, say, 25 degrees below zero, a cozy fire awaited them in a fire pit. And, as further expression of my hospitality, I always make sure that the graveled dog run near their seating area was freshly poop-scooped. Nothing was too good for my guests.
Perhaps here would be a good place to admit that I'm a bit "anal" about poop-scooping on a gravel surface (please note my restraint in not laughing at my own pun: Anal. Poop scooping. Get it?). I think Freud might have had something to say about a person so possessed with not scooping up one more piece of gravel than is absolutely necessary. I say, "Screw Freud," (yet another pun if you're a Freudian). I've analyzed myself and believe that my desire to collect poop with the delicacy of a neuro-surgeon is rooted in one of three explanations: 1) I'm frugal and would rather spend money at Anthropologie than at a landscape company replenishing pea gravel; 2) The older I get, the harder it is to hoist a trash bag of doggie-doo when 150 lbs. of pea gravel is stuck to it, and 3) (my personal favorite): Poop scooping to meet self imposed criteria has become a challenge.
It's important that as we age, we keep our mind stimulated. By having achieved a high skill level of poop scooping, I delay decrepitude. My children should thank me.
But I've digressed. We're back to Thanksgiving. There I was, scooping the dog run in the hour before my guests were to arrive. and damn if there wasn't a small piece that kept eluding me. If the "nugget" didn't slip between the tines of my rake, it rolled beyond my reach. If I flicked it too hard, it ricocheted off the shovel and flew behind me. I was spending entirely too much time on one piece of poop that seemingly had a mind of its own.
I surveyed the dog run. Except for this one recalcitrant piece of poop, it was pristine. Leaving the piece and attending to something else, say, the Thanksgiving turkey, wasn't an option. I put it to you this way; Have you ever shared a meal with a companion who was unaware of a glob of ketchup on his chin? The longer you looked at him, the more you noticed the ketchup, and pretty soon, the spot became larger than life and was the only thing you saw when you looked at his face? You had to wipe it off as surely as you needed to scratch an itch. This was like that. Leaving the poop to mar the gravel landscape couldn't be tolerated.
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| Dooby-dooby-doo |
The poop and I faced each other. It was going to take more than clever rake skills to maneuver this piece of poop onto my shovel, it was going to take psychology. I needed to be one with the doo doo, to think like the doo doo, to BE the doo doo. (A bit of trivia here. Little known is that Frank Sinatra got the idea for his famous "dooby dooby doo" in "Strangers in the Night" from this very story).
More trivia. That last part? I lied. Sorry.
In hindsight, I might have had less trouble with the poop had it not been a perfect sphere. Or small. Or have the texture of a Tootsy Pop (a chewy nougat center with a hard outer shell - and sorry if you're eating right now). If it wasn't slipping between the tines of my rake, it was rolling away from me. If it wasn't rolling away, it bounced. Capturing this piece was no longer just a challenge, there was a principle involved. I WAS going to be smarter than a piece of shit. And so, with head down, scooper in hand and chin jutting out in determination, I walked, and scooped. Walked and scooped. Chased, corralled, lost it - and chased again. I never looked up, I kept my eye on the prize, and I kept after it.
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| Not my burning turkey. A recreation of someone else's burning turkey |
Which was how I came to be three miles away from my house on Thanksgiving while my dinner guests languished over an ash tray, wondering if someone should do something about the smoke billowing out of the oven.
I had chased the damn thing into traffic, and in the end, a yellow Ryder rental truck did what I could not. It conquered the poop by flattening it.
By now you're probably asking yourself few things. Why hadn't I simply bent over and collected the poop with a plastic bag covered hand? Why hadn't I used a sifter to separate the poop from the gravel? And (you ask yourself): Why am I still reading this blog about poop? In short order, the answers are that using my hand would have defeated the challenge of the contest; Owning a sifter with the expressed purpose of separating poop from gravel is too anal even for me, and you're still reading this because you recognize great literature when you see it?
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| Flex Rakes. The Poop Scoopers of Champions |
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| Grip & Grab Poop Scooper |
I finish with one more observation; I think my gender makes a difference in this story. Applied Animal Behavior Science Journal is set to release the results of a study that found that dogs walked on leashes by men are four times more likely to threaten and bite other dogs during the walk. Could gender make a difference when choosing our poop scooping tools? I use Flex Rakes. The rake/shovel system requires delicacy, wrist action and patience. It allows me finesse and it gives me options. I can use the corner of the rake, or I can raise it over my head and pound the daylights out of the poop as I turn the air blue with expletives. I notice that many men in my neighborhood, however, prefer "Grip and Grab" type scoops. Now I ask you: does a Grip and Grab look like it offers any kind of control? I think men like this sort of scoop because it resembles a piece of heavy construction equipment called a clam shell scoop. Men love monster trucks, chain saws and heavy equipment. Why use a plain old rake when you can make truck sounds while poop scooping? Why pick up a pile of poop when you can grab the earth underneath it, and possibly every worm, insect and mole in the earth as well?
Thanksgiving is soon upon us. We're breaking with tradition this year and leaving town, us and the dogs. There is no pea gravel dog run where we're going. There are no smokers. I feel sure, however, that there will be poop.
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| Clam shell scoop close up |
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| A honking BIG clam shell scoop |
Posts
I am glad to see I am not alone in the whole must-not-pick-up-gravel mindset. I have no desire to roll heavy wheelbarrows of rocks to replenish the dog potty yard, so it is to my advantage to leave as much gravel as possible IN the yard.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, the dexterity challenge involved in such meticulous poop-collecting apparently has become a mental illness...err, healthy mental and physical game all its own.