Did you know that something out there finds dog poo so
irresistible that it has created an entire economy based on this
fact?
I didn’t
either; in fact, I never gave the whole dog poo issue much thought
until I started noticing the unassailable evidence that there were
forces at work in the woods collecting the stuff. For simplicity, I
call this entity or force the “poo fairy”.
What finally
made the penny drop? Well, for years I’ve been walking various of
my dog companions. You cannot make a dog go to the toilet before they
walk, so invariably they would save their poo until we were safely on
some forest byway. Most of the time they would discreetly mosey into
the underbrush beside the trail to accomplish this, but sometimes the
poo ended up on the trail or within sight of it. My response has
invariably been to find a stick and sweep the poo into the bush. Out
of sight, out of mind; no fuss, no bother.
I figure this is
analogous to putting horse shit on my vegetable garden, as I did this
spring: a good thing that plants enjoy.
Anyway. Over
the past few years I’ve started to notice that some people – the
ones that don’t just ignore the issue and don’t mind if they
annoy the other walkers -- don’t sweep up after their dogs.
Instead, they activate their little poo bag and collect it, just like
they would on any city sidewalk or in the park across the road. This
makes a certain amount of sense in a locale like the Beaver Lodge
Forest Lands, in that there are garbage cans prominent at the road
access to every trail.
Although why it’s
better to bag and consign to the dump, where the nice biodegradable
bag cannot degrade is not really clear to me. (And, just in case you
were wondering, we know the bags in the garbage containers do go to
the dump and are not merely a central depot for the poo fairy to pick
up, because we’ve seen the City crews emptying the bags. Although
of course I suppose it’s remotely conceivable, if we consider all
possibilities, that the City crews and the poo fairy have a
relationship. Based on what I’ve observed of City crews, however, I
don’t think this likely.)
But then it slowly
intruded on my consciousness that poo bags were starting to appear
beside the trail, or in the bush. This makes no sense, I reasoned,
unless something or someone wants the poo preserved: why else would
you wrap it in plastic?
Well, I’m no
archeologist or theologian, able to reconstruct entire civilizations
and belief systems from the most basic of artefacts, but I can
construct a theory if given sufficient evidence. And yesterday I made
the discovery that makes the theory I’ve outlined possible:
You will notice
that the bag is blue, so highly visible. It was also right beside the
trail, so no trouble to find. I figure that, when the poo fairy
family undertakes the poo collection, it’s a bit like hunting
Easter eggs: you always have to put some in places where the little
ones can find them. The rest are more difficult, tossed well back
from the trail and black, or brown, or green, to make them more
difficult to find.
But of course we do
find them, untouched by the autumn rains, just as soon as the leaves
depart in the Fall.
By then they’ve
become highly visible. I guess that’s just in case the poo fairy
family missed them on previous rounds.
Speaking of poo,
you know that question you ask when someone asks a question so
obvious it need not be asked?
Specifically: Do
bears shit in the woods?
Well, ironically
the question isn’t as obvious as all that, because it depends. My
observation is that bears aren’t that fussy about where they shit,
so the accurate answer is: Bears shit where it’s convenient for
them.
There are several
resident bears behind the airport, where a 15-year old Eli and I now
walk most days. He’s no longer interested in them, being too old,
but I am, and I’ve noticed that, at this time of the year you can
frequently see bear tracks, and occasionally get a glimpse of bear,
but never see bear poop. I assume that’s because they’re eating
vegetable matter and dead things, and those are accessed in remote
areas, far from where we’re walking.
However, come
blackberry season, the evidence of bear will be right in the middle
of every path and road we walk, because the blackberries grow right
next to the old logging road. We’ll also encounter bears regularly,
because they’ll be unlikely to abandon their position in the berry
patch just because there are occasional people and dogs around.
When Eli was a
younger dog he and I often went on long rambles, one of which took us
by logging road to near the top of Menzies Mountain, just north of
Campbell River. It was blueberry season. You couldn’t miss the fact
that there were bears about because, although we didn’t see any,
there were literally hundreds of bear dumps in the few kilometres we
traveled. I’ve never seen such a collection in so relatively short
a space before or since.
Clearly the bears
of Menzies Mountain had figured out that it’s a lot easier to go
from one berry patch to the next by road than it is to fight the
underbrush cross-country.
And clearly those
bears, at least, shat on the road, rather than in the woods.
