LAST EDITED ON 12-22-09 AT 07:20 PM (EST)Visiting a friend. Small party in progress. The friend has a dog of the small puffball variety. (Dweeze would insist it isn't a real dog, as his definition kicks in around fifty pounds. Bichon Frisé, this one.) We reach the point in the proceedings where the dog needs to be walked. I could use some fresh air, so I volunteer.
Very cold out: I am covered in multiple layers, as is the dog. Very unsteady out: streets plowed down to remove the snow, but leave a layer of ice two inches thick everywhere except the corners, where it turns into an equal amount of rapidly-freezing slush. The dog has a lot of pulling power for its size. Trying very hard not to ice-skate. Really don't want to fall down on this. Or the dog.
Dog seems to be enjoying itself in the snow, but is also having some trouble. Find the spots by scent, says its brain, and scents are hard to come by in a snowfield. She sniffs her way along, searching with increasing desperation for grass. Not much to be found. Most of the people who cleared their driveways in this residential neighborhood did so by piling the snow up along the little strips of quasi-lawn between sidewalk and curb. Some just went for the sidewalk, which is why we're walking in the road a lot. The dog has not been trained to treat the road as a bathroom. The dog is trained to grass. The dog is confused, and so blocks pass without much of anything happening.
...and finally, grass. Someone used a snowblower here, skirted a corner, exposed just enough turf for a small dog to stand on. She gets excited, hops the curb and begins sniffing around. I alternate between watching her and looking at the house. Small, slanted roof, no plants or chairs or decorations or anything on the porch, unpleasant shade of off-green in the streetlight, matched in the faintly-moving curtains behind the main window. The dog doesn't care about that. She's just sniffing and moving around on the grass --
-- okay, she's done. In fact, she's done nothing. Easy enough to see in the glare of the lamp: nothing solid, and she never assumed a liquid-disposal position. Unless she got it all in/out within the five-second spans when I wasn't looking -- and regardless, no solids. Sigh and tug at the leash, getting ready to move on.
Porch light comes on. Front door opens.
Small elderly woman, call her late seventies with hair carrying more dye than her total body weight: you don't get that kind of black at that age with her skin color unless Clairol provides, and you sure don't get the highlights. Thin mouth. Glasses solid and curved enough to cook a mini-casserole in. Screaming.
She wants me to know they have leash laws in this neighborhood, and she wants me to know it at high volume. She demands to know if I live around here, because she doesn't recognize me and I have no right to walk this dog if I don't live here. She screams that I have to pick up after my dog. She wants me to do it right now.
A little confused here. It's not my dog. Since this isn't a gated community, I am free to travel the sidewalk with or without temporary canine companion. I'm not sure how she expects to recognize anyone under all the layers (including facial) which I'm wearing, but it does occur to me that I may have the only example of my given melanin ratio in the vicinity, plus she may spend her days memorizing the exact physical configuration of everyone within a three-block radius. But the main issue here is picking up after the dog. It's just that the dog hasn't done anything which I can pick up.
Maybe she thinks I came this far out of my supposed territory so I could get the dog to do a dump-and-run without cleaning up? I can resolve that. I reach into my jacket pocket and remove the bag I've been carrying around as a just-in-case.
She's screaming more loudly now. (I expect lights to come on up and down the street. They don't.) Her demands now move to more detailed instructions. I am to pick up what the dog did, and I am never to come back. And don't even think about dropping it in her yard, or putting it in her mailbox, or her garbage cans, or...
All right. I have a biddy. An interfering hyper-authoritative parasite with no actual power. I also have a party to get back to.
So I make a mistake. I calmly speak to her.
I explain, very carefully, that I cannot pick up what does not exist. The dog (who is tugging very hard now, eager to be moving on and oh, do I ever agree with her) did not execute a bowel movement. While I am carrying the bag so that I may pick up after the dog when such a movement occurs, the bag will have to remain empty because the dog is still full. And I can't catch liquids as they emerge. There is no dog poop on the ground, and she is welcome to come off her porch and inspect for herself.
This makes her louder. (She's in good lung shape for her age, really.) How dare I tell her what to do! She knows the dog dumped on her grass: she was watching the whole time! I'm just trying to get her out there so I can throw the poop under her shoes! Or in her house! I have no right to be in her neighborhood with my horrible pooping dog!
...all right. This is still a biddy. She's not going to recognize logic, nor will she respect evidence procedures. I am guilty of curb law murder because there's no tiny brown corpse. If I stay here, she's just going to scream some more. If I leave, she'll yell at my back for a while and then have nothing to berate but empty air. (Why aren't any lights coming on up and down the street? Are the neighbors used to this? Does she have any left?) Given that, I decide the dog has the right idea and start to follow the tug.
She lets me know, at the current crest of her volume, that she's going to call the police. I will be arrested. Fined. Forced to clean up my dog's mess. Because I am an evil (censored, and it's the first time she's going that far) who doesn't belong in her neighborhood and I will be made to pay.
I turn around.
I steadily inform her that the dog did not do anything. If she wants the police to find something, she is going to have to come down from the porch, pull her sweatpants down, squat over the grass, and provide it herself. Of course, there's a chance the police would be able to tell the difference between human and canine feces, but since she's basically a bipedal yapping chihuahua, maybe she'll be able to pull it off. But if she does go that far, I'm going to film the entire thing on my phone. Just for evidence, she understands. There is no possible other market for it, not given the star.
This results in about four seconds of a very familiar dead silence. (Some people have trouble believing that I can respond. With words. Over one syllable. And that I have any right to do so. Or, of course, be in the neighborhood.) And then she starts screaming again, calling me a foul-mouthed (censored) who shouldn't even be on this street where decent people live, and...
But all this is directed at my back. I follow the dog back up the block, and the soundtrack never stops. It still doesn't fade after we turn the corner, and I can keep audio track of her for another half-block.
Eventually, the dog urinates. Twice, yellow-staining the edges of two different snowbanks. If there's been no bowel movement by now, there probably isn't going to be one. Time to head back --
-- and then the snow is stained with light. Red and blue flashing lights.
The bitch? Called the police to report an illegal pooping...
Did you ever feel like murder would be less trouble?
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