Trent and Mersey canal bank, Hopwas, Staffordshire. 4:31pm, Saturday, 2nd April 2011.
Trent and Mersey canal bank, Hopwas, Staffordshire. 4:29pm, Saturday, 2nd April 2011.
These caught my eye today, cycling the Trent & Mersey canal towpath in Hopwas, Staffordshire. About 40 in all, someone had made little flags, from laminated fluorescent card and sticks, and popped one in at every pile of animal mess. Remarkable, dedicated, and a bit OCD, to be frank.
Everyone hates dogshit, and irresponsible dog owners deserve all they get. Regular readers will know my feelings on this sort of thing. But there’s something a bit unsettling about this; wouldn’t it just be more time productive to bag it up and hand it back to the offender? That’s an awful lot of work. And not all the flags were on dog mess, either. At least three were clearly fox droppings. Good luck with training them…
I mention this now, because in coming weeks, I want to think about stuff like this, litter, flytipping and what we hate, how it manifests itself and what we expect from those who have to deal with it. Dog mess is a nuisance, and we not only have to deal with the raw product where it falls, but there’s now an annoying trend for people to bag it and leave the bags hanging, like some bizarre fruit, from trees, fences and hedgerows. I have no idea what those people are thinking, but please stop it…
I will return to the subject of our environment soon. In the meantime, I salute the phantom flag erector, although I’m not sure I’d want to meet them…