So the other night I’m walking my dogs and on the other side of the block is an old lady. I groan a little on the inside. It’s been noted here that perhaps my dogs are a little, say, energetic, and this is why I prefer to walk them at around midnight when there is no one around.
I’m also groaning because (as has been noted here) I am still recovering from hand surgery and I stupidly decided to take both dogs with me on the walk because i was feeling lazy, even though my right hand still has a tendency to let go of things like leash handles.
So, yeah, little old lady up ahead, the dogs are excited. She’s looking at me with some intense but perplexing emotion on her face. Is she mad at me? did she poop her pants? Is she one of Teddy Roosevelt’s scorned lovers?? I approach.
“mumble mumble mumble…poop?”
Oh my god! She pooped her pants and she wants me to help her! oh fuck, me and my unruly army of jackasses have been chosen by god to serve the elderly on some bizarre poop related crisis. I don’t even know how to help an old lady who pooped her pants. I decide to give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe I misheard her, maybe she didn’t say anything about poop. Maybe she said something about ‘scoop’ as in ‘I know you love ice cream, let’s go get a scoop’. It’s a long shot but I look at her and say, “excuse me?”
“Are you going to pick up your dog’s poop?!”
Well, this was certainly unexpected. What is she asking me? Of course I pick up my dog’s poop, i’m holding a bag of it! I show her the bag, “I always pick up after my dogs”, smile smile smile!
Wait, why am I talking to someone about poop? I don’t know this person. When I don;t know someone I want to talk about things with a neutral odor like the weather or the moon. You know, things that don;t smell like fecal matter.
um…now she’s really looking angry. What’s going on. She points to the ground and says, “pick up your dog’s poop!!!”. I follow her finger to the ground. poop? there’s just a piece of a branch on the ground, it’s not poop. It’s poop shaped and poop colored and…oh! Yeah. Crazy old lady.
I’m standing on the sidewalk with two jackass dogs and a crazy lady blaming the vagaries of tree construction on my dogs’ anuses. I don’t even know what to do! How do I explain that this is only a tree branch and even if it was poop (which it most certainly is not unless that dog in question has some seriouss dietary issues) it could not have come from my dogs as we had just come upon this spot and my dogs’ buttholes are not equipped with Star Trek style beam up technology (as far as I know).
I look at her. I look at the poop branch. I consider my options.
I pull a bag from my pocket, use it to pick up the stick and thank her for reminding me to pick it up. We head on our merry way.
Sometimes the crazy people have to think they are winning. It’s the only way to keep the earth spinning.