Abandoned Poo Baggies

Stanley is our dog. He’s two and a half years old, and one of the sweetest dogs Steph and I have owned. We found him (or he found us) after Nikki had died at the ripe old age of 19. I don’t know who coined the term “fur babies,” but that’s what they become—snuggly things that dog-smile when you get home and cuddle up with you on the couch (I was against dogs on the couch and bed, but then Steph looked at me with those big, round pleading eyes and I relented). Even though Stan is 70 pounds, he can get right up there on Steph’s lap and snuggle in.

I’m the dog walker. Most days I take Stan on a three miler that takes us into the back trails of Theadore Wirth Park. I’ve got one of those harnesses that tether to a belt around my waist and allows him to walk ahead and roam side to side to sniff at what I suspect are places where other dogs have peed. He almost always adds to the funk.

Which leads me to a grievance. If Stanley poops, I carry a roll of plastic bags used to collect it. You know the drill—cover your hand with the baggie, pick it up, turn the baggie inside out, then tie a nice knot to seal it up. I carry the bag until I find a public trash can. But there are some people who go through the whole process of collecting the poo, only to abandon the baggie on the side of the trail. One lives in our neighborhood.

At first I thought the person left the baggie on the trail and responsibly came back upon exiting the park to pick it up. That’s cool; seems prudent. But then, just recently, I saw a baggie on the trail that was still there the next day. Then the following day, one more. Eventually, four accumulated. All were forest green, so I assumed one culprit.

Who does that, go through the whole process of picking up the mess, then leaving the bag? Better to leave it to decompose. It’s the woods, not some downtown Minneapolis street corner. I’ve done it myself when no one was looking. Feces is fertilizer, right? Just let that poo fertilize the forest. It’s downright environmentally sound.

But bagging and leaving?

I typically don’t like confrontation. That’s what Stephanie says, and I agree. But I really don’t like the bagging and leaving. It feels just so…wrong.

I did something a little less confrontational: I posted a photo of the four baggies on the Nextdoor app.

Lots of comments. It seemed I wasn’t the only one frustrated with this behavior. And it seemed that bagging and leaving was a definite phenomenon. People posted that they’d witnessed abandoned poop baggies on the Appalachian Trail, up in the Rocky Mountain National Park, and on a hike down into the Grand Canyon. It seemed I stumbled across a national epidemic. Of course, no one fessed up on Nextdoor to doing it on the Wirth Park trails. And despite my neighborhood post, I found another abandoned baggie. The same forest-green color. The same person.

I came to suspect a neighbor down the street. I always thought this person was a little crazy. She has this front yard with a nice garden, I guess. I guess because she put up a bright orange fence in front of it. You know, like the kind construction workers use to surround a whole dug up in the middle of the street. Then in the winter, she would put out a line of reflective markers to make sure the city plows didn’t somehow bump over the curb and scrape up her grass. And she has this big Labro-something that took what I perceived to be the same volume turds that I’d seen in the bags. And I’d never seen her walk back from the park with a full baggie. Her name is Edna, a blue-haired, pinched-mouth, senior citizen with a scowl.

What would you do?

I tried to be nice, discreet, non-confrontational. I typed out a one-paragraph message on my computer and added the photo I had of the discarded poop bags. I didn’t straight out say she was the perpetrator. I prefaced the message with, “If you are…” I believe I was being polite. I had no intention of shaming her, at least in public.

I didn’t sign the note, but I knew she knew that it was me. In the past, Edna would pass by with her scowl, but we’d at least exchange pleasantries, “Nice day,” or just “Hello.” I passed her recently, and I said, “Looks like rain tomorrow.” To that, nothing; Edna just kept walking.

But I did notice that on the handle of her leash was one of those dog-bone-shaped packets where you can pinch out a new baggie, like a tissue dispenser. I noticed that the small edge of the baggie sticking out was forest green.

Then another forest-green poo baggie was abandoned on the trail.

What does it take these days to be a responsible citizen? This winter, our city was invaded by four thousand ICE agents who stalked innocent immigrants as they rode to work, walked their neighborhoods, or dropped their kids off at school or daycare. With that happening, you can’t just stay home with your head in the sand. You protest in the ten below weather, protest No Kings at the Capitol—you say something. I believe I owed it to my other neighbors, to the city, and the Park Board, to say something.

I wrote another anonymous note with a photo of a discarded, abandoned bag of dog feces.

The next day, the note was on my front steps, along with a loaded forest-green baggie.

That’s when I decided to kill her.

Well, that was my fantasy. I know you’ve also had this fantasy. What would it feel like to kill someone? How would you get away with it? There can’t be blood if you want to hide the body. With blood there’s like a trail, and it gets on everything; you’d have to get all crazy with bleach, and then that spilled bleach burns white spots into your clothes. No, you need to keep the body intact. So that might mean poison, like oleander or arsenic. But poisoning would be nearly impossible with Edna; she’s not going to consume anything I leave anonymously on her doorstep. Then it has to be blunt trauma. I could easily pass her on the trails, turn, and then whack her upside the head with a cudgel of some kind. A nice stick of firewood. Once down, I’d probably need to finish the job with a few more whacks to the head. But then what about the Labra-something that she’d be walking? Anyway, that was my fantasy talking.

The reality? I did see her a few days later walking her dog on the trails. I had Stanley with me. He’s a good walker and doesn’t lunge or bark after every dog we pass. So, I stayed far behind Edna as she walked beside the Quaking Bog, where sometimes dudes hook up on Tinder. I followed as she turned onto one of the cross-country ski trails. Then I saw her Labra-something begin to circle in that dog ritual of taking a dump. He or she dumped. Edna pulled out a forest green poop bag, picked up the feces, and neatly tied the bag. Edna then carried the bag to a trash can near the public parking lot.

Maybe it wasn’t Edna who had been bagging and abandoning.

Now what? Of course, she must have known it was me who put those notes on her doorstep. She put that same note on my doorstep with the bagged turd. But was she certain that it was me? The notes were all anonymous, so there had to be doubt. To send her an apology note now, or, God forbid, apologize verbally, would be admitting my guilt for accusing her.

And then, like Stephanie always says, I abhor confrontation.

Note: Just kidding; this is all just made up. I do hate confrontation and would rather pick up the discarded poop bags than confront the perpetrator. In fact, I did pick up those very real bags. Who does that?

Like my fiction? The latest is The Moon Tavern that takes the reader on a romantic and culinary journey through the Islands of Croatia, where dark family secrets are revealed, quirky friends and relatives are found, and love is discovered. And thankfully, no dog turds.