Man up!

Okay this will be a rant.  Hang on to your seat.  I'm angry.

Yesterday it was cruddy, rainy, sleety, snowy and any other verb for late winter weather you wish to insert.  I got my mail quickly then went inside.

Today, it is cold, cloudy, gray, and sad outside.  At around noonish I opened my front door to check to see if the mail has been dropped off yet.  It hadn't.  But I did find something peculiar sitting on my bench.  It was a waterlogged piece of paper.  Curious, I picked it up.  It was a Warning from Animal Control.

Apparently, someone complained about the amount of dog crap in my yard.  Also, according to the paper, I needed to license my dogs.  My BS meter immediatley started pinging.  Only 1 of my dogs needs their license renewed.  Anyway, I went to my back door and noticed, yeah, okay, I see some turds. I could probably go out this weekend and rake.  My eyes went back to the paper in my hand.

"Excement must be removed from the yard IMMEDIATLEY."  I checked the date at the top of the paper.  This warning was issued the 19th (Yesterday).  They were coming back to check on this situation on the 20th (today). 

So, they either expected me to pick up crap in the pouring cold rain, or get it done during business hours today which makes no sense. While there are a great number of people that are home during business hours, I am typically not one of them.  Animal Control only operates until 6pm Monday through Friday. 

So, I gave them a ring.  Explained to them that I happened to come across this note just today around noon and explained that the crap cannot be removed from my yard if they were coming right away.  (I didn't say crap to them.  I said poop.  They kept calling it excrement, but I refuse to hold myself to such high class.  My yard is full of crap afterall.)

They asked if I could remove it by tomorrow.  Even though its a pain in my ass, I said yeah it could and they told me an officer would be out tomorrow to make sure it got picked up.  So, once Mike got home from work, I put on my shoes and donned a shovel and a rake and went to town.  Once I got out there, I admit, there was a lot of poo that was caked in over the winter, but from a distance, you wouldn't even be able to tell if it was mud or poo.  I've concluded that the neighbor that moved in next door must've complained.  Which brings me to the real reason I am mad.

Am I so intimidating that you can't knock on my door if the crap is bothering you?  Seriously.  I'm not that bad of a person.  If you ask, I'll clean it.  Typically, the poop from the winter gets cleaned up in the early spring but coincidentally, I was in the hospital and recovering from surgery in the month of March.  Sorry we've slipped so far into April but we've had so much damn rain that I'm not going to go into the back yard to clean it up.  I want to wait until it dries out so it won't be so heavy.  Also, I have a 4 month old to care for and my husband works long hours so I think the more irresponsible thing to do would be to leave my child unattended to scrape up doo doo in my yard.  Because then you would called Child Protective Services and DHS would leave a note on my door about the baby pee and come back the next day to check on it.

When it comes down to it, I admit it is my fault.  I am a dog owner and it is my reponsibility to keep up on this task.  But where is the neighborly compassion?  Why can't you grow a pair and come to my directly instead of a 3rd party.  We talk over the fence.  We're cordial and polite. I've even said if you have a problem with my dogs let me know and we'll fix it.  No, instead, I went into my back yard this afternoon and rustled up the poop. Also rustling up a stench. SO, in the end, now the poop is gone, but both of our yards now smell like rotten logs when it didn't before.  Happy?