Burley Cross Postbox Theft (5 page)

Further to a series of in-depth discussions with a significant number of the dog owners in this village (and its local environs), I think it would be fair to say that the model I follow with Samson is the model that most other reasonable people also adhere to, i.e. the collection of dog mess is only appropriate within an ‘urban/residential’ setting, in public parks (where people are liable to picnic, stroll, relax, and children play) and finally – under very special circumstances – where your animal might be perceived to have ‘despoiled’ a well-used moorland path to the detriment of other walkers’ enjoyment of it (although this last requirement is not legally binding but simply a question of community spirit).

I believe I am correct in saying that all of the above criteria tally perfectly with the procedures formally established by local government, and that – up until TP chanced to throw her very large (very filthy!) spanner into the works – these procedures were generally held to be not only just, but successful, necessary and universally beneficial.

With the arrival of TP, however, this fragile consensus was attacked, savagely mauled and rent asunder.
³⁸
TP, as you may well know, owns four large German shepherds and prefers – rather eccentrically – to take them on long walks on the moor in the moonlight (I say ‘them’, although so far as I am aware she only ever walks one dog at any given time
³⁹
). These four large dogs are usually kept confined inside a concrete ‘compound’
⁴⁰
in the back garden of Hursley End – her dilapidated bungalow on Lamb’s Green.

It was initially – she insists – due to the difficulties she experienced in negotiating/avoiding random dog faeces during these night-time hikes that her bizarre habit of bagging other people’s dogs’ faeces and leaving them deposited on branches, walls and fence posts – apparently as a warning/admonishment to others less responsible than herself – commenced.
⁴¹
This activity continued for upwards of six months before anyone either commented on it publicly or felt the urge to root out/apprehend the strange individual in our midst who had inexplicably chosen to enact this ‘special service’ on our behalf.
⁴²

Given the idiosyncratic nature of the bags employed (TP prefers a small, pink-tinged, transparent bag
⁴³
– probably better adapted for household use, i.e. freezing meat
⁴⁴
– instead of the usual, custom-made, matt-black kind
⁴⁵
) it was easy, from very early on, to understand that the person bagging up and ‘displaying’ these faeces was not only happy, but almost
keen
to leave some kind of ‘signature’ behind.

When the bags were eventually identified as belonging to none other than TP (and she was calmly – very
sensitively –
confronted with her crimes), rather than apologizing, quietly retreating, or putting a summary halt to her bizarre activities, she responded – somewhat perversely – by actively
redoubling
her poop-gathering efforts! In fact she went
still one stage further!
She began to present herself in public
⁴⁶
as a wronged party, as a necessary – if chronically undervalued – environmental watchdog, as a doughty, cruelly misunderstood
moral crusader, standing alone and defenceless – clutching her trademark, transparent poo-bag to her heaving chest – against the freely defecating heathen marauder!

And it gets worse! She then went on the offensive (see Docs. 3+4 – copies of letters sent to the local press), angrily accusing the general body of responsible dog owners in Burley Cross of actively destroying the picturesque and historic moor by encouraging our animals to ‘evacuate’
⁴⁷
there.

One occasion, in particular, stands out in my mind. I met her – quite by chance – on a sunny afternoon, overburdened by shopping from the village store
⁴⁸
. I offered to take her bags for her and during the walk back to her home took some pains to explain to her that there was
no actual legal requirement
for dog owners to collect their dog’s faeces from the surrounding farm and moorland (The Dogs Fouling of Land Act, 1996). Her reaction to this news was to blush to the roots of her hair, spit out the word ‘justifier!’, roughly snatch her bags from me
⁴⁹
and then quote, at length, like a thing possessed (as if reciting some ancient biblical proverb
⁵⁰
) from the (aforementioned) EnCams publication on the subject.
⁵¹

To return to this useful document for just a moment, in
Dog Fouling and the Law
, EnCams provide an invaluable ‘profile of a dog fouler’ (p. 4 – when you read it for yourself you will discover that it is an extremely thorough and thought-provoking piece of analysis). Apparently the average ‘fouler’ enjoys watching TV and attending the cinema but has a profound mistrust of soap opera, around half of them have internet access – mainly at home – but ‘are not particularly confident in its usage’, and they are most likely to read the
Sun
and
Mirror
(but very rarely the
Daily Mail
or the
Financial Times)
.
⁵²

EnCams have invented their own broad label to describe these irresponsible individuals: they call them ‘justifiers’, i.e. they justify their behaviour on the grounds of a)
Ignorance
(‘I didn’t realize it was a problem…’ ‘But nobody has ever mentioned this to me before etc.) and b)
Laziness
(‘But nobody else ever picks it up, so why should I?’).

EnCams insist that these ‘justifiers’ will only ever openly admit that they allow their dog to foul in public when placed under extreme duress. Their fundamental instinct is to simply pretend it hasn’t happened or to lie about it.

Although I cannot deny that this profile is both interesting and – I don’t doubt – perfectly valid in many – if not
most –
instances, TP was nevertheless entirely wrong to try and label me – of all people – with this wildly inappropriate nomenclature: I am neither ignorant, lazy nor in denial. Quite the opposite, in fact. I am informed, proactive and socially aware. And although I do dislike soaps,
⁵³
I very rarely go to the cinema,
⁵⁴
and my computer skills are – as this letter itself, I hope, will attest – universally acknowledged to be tip-top.

Since my acquisition of the EnCams document I have tried – countless times – to explain to TP (see Doc. 5 + Doc. 6: some valuable examples of our early correspondence) that not only am I a keen advocate of poop-scooping in residential areas and public parks, but that it shows
absolutely no moral or intellectual inconsistency on my part
to hold that allowing excrement to decompose naturally on the moor is infinitely more environmental than bagging it up and adding it, quite unthinkingly, to this small island’s already chronically over-extended quantities of landfill. I have also told her that by
simply bagging up the faeces she finds and then dumping them, willy-nilly, she is only serving to exacerbate the ‘problem’
⁵⁵
because the excrement cannot be expected to decompose inside its plastic skin. Rather than helping matters she is actually making them infinitely worse – once bagged, the excrement is there forever: a tawdry bauble – a permanent, sordid testament to the involuntary act of physical evacuation!

As you will no doubt be aware, around two months ago Wharfedale’s dog warden – the ‘criminally over-subscribed’
⁵⁶
Trevor Horsmith – was persuaded
⁵⁷
to start to take an interest in the problems being generated by TP’s activities on the moor. It will probably strike you as intensely ironic that
TP herself
was one of the main instigators in finally involving Trevor in this little local ‘mess’ of ours.
⁵⁸

After familiarizing himself with the consequences of TP’s ‘work’ (on the moor and beyond
⁵⁹
) Horsmith announced (I’m paraphrasing here
⁶⁰
) that while he fully condoned – even admired!
⁶¹
– TP’s desire to keep the moor clean, it was still perfectly legitimate for dog owners to allow their pets to defecate there, and that while excrement could not, in all conscience, be calibrated as ‘litter’ (it decomposes for heaven’s sake! Same as an apple core!) once it has been placed inside
plastic (no matter how laudable the motivation
⁶²
) then it
must necessarily
be considered so.
⁶³

Horsmith’s pronouncement on this issue was obviously the most devastating blow for TP (and her cause), yet it by no means prompted her to desist from her antisocial behaviour. By way of an excuse for (partial explanation of/attempt to distract attention from) her strange, nocturnal activities, she suddenly changed tack and began claiming (see Doc. 6 again, last three paras) that – for the most part – whenever she goes on walks she generally bags up the vast majority of the faeces she finds and disposes of them herself (‘double-wrapped’, she writes – somewhat primly – inside her dustbin, at home
⁶⁴
) and that on the rare occasions when she leaves the bags behind it is either because a) the ‘problem’ (as she perceives it) is so severe that she feels a strong, public statement needs to be made to other dog owners, b) the sheer volume of excrement is such that it is simply too much for her to carry home all in one go (while managing a large dog at the same time), and c) that she is sometimes prey to the sudden onset of acute arthritic ‘spasms’ in her fingers, which mean that she is unable to grip the bags properly and so is compelled to leave them
in situ
, while harbouring ‘every earthly intention’ of returning to collect them at a later date.

I am not – of course – in any way convinced by this pathetic, half-cocked hodge-podge of explanations. In answer to a) I say that other dog owners are
completely within their rights
to allow their dogs to defecate responsibly on the moor. They have the
law
on their side. It is a perfectly
legitimate
and
natural
way to proceed. In answer to b) I say that the
volume
of excrement on the moor is rarely, if ever – in my extensive experience of these matters – excessive (especially given the general rate of decomposition etc.). In answer to c) I say that it
strikes me as rather odd that the same person who can apparently manage to ‘bag up’ huge quantities of excrement when their fingers are –
ahem –
‘spasming’
⁶⁵
is somehow unable to perform that superficially much less arduous act of transporting it back home with them!
⁶⁶

Many of TP’s bags lie around on the moor for months on end and no visible attempt is made to move them. Last Thursday, for example, I counted over forty-two bags of excrement dotted randomly about the place on my morning stroll. Sometimes I come across a bag displayed in the most extraordinary of places. Yesterday I found one dangling up high in the midst of a thorny bush. It was very obvious that not only would the person who hung the bag there have been forced to sustain some kind of injury in its display (unless they wore a thick pair of protective gloves), but that so would the poor soul (and
here’s
the rub!) who felt duty-bound to retrieve it and dispose of it.
⁶⁷
This was, in effect, a piece of purely spiteful behaviour – little less, in fact, than an act of social/ environmental terrorism.

Shoshana and I have both become so sickened, angered and dismayed by the awful mess TP has made of our local area (I mean who is to judge when an activity such as this passes from being ‘in the public interest’
⁶⁸
to a plain and simple public nuisance?
⁶⁹
) that, in sheer desperation, we have begun to gather up the rotten bags ourselves.

On Friday, two weeks back
⁷⁰
, Shoshana gathered up over thirty-six bags. On her way home – exhausted – from the
village’s poop-scoop bins
⁷¹
she tripped on a crack in the pavement, fell heavily, sprained her wrist and dislocated her collarbone.
⁷²
I will not say that we blame TP
entirely
for this calamity, but we do hold her at least partially responsible.
⁷³

After Shoshana’s ‘accident’ I marched over to TP’s bungalow, fully intent on having it out with her,
⁷⁴
but TP (rather fortuitously) was nowhere to be found. It was then – as I stood impotently in her front garden, seething with frustration – that I resolved
⁷⁵
to take the opportunity to do a little private investigation of my own. If you remember,
⁷⁶
TP had claimed that many – if not most – of the bags of excrement she retrieved from the moor, she automatically carried back home with her (only leaving the unmanageable excess behind) and placed them, double-wrapped, into her dustbin (alongside what I imagine would be the considerable quantities of excrement collected from her
own
four, chronically obese dogs which – as you know – she keeps penned up, 24/7,
⁷⁷
inside that criminally small and claustrophobic, purpose-built concrete compound
⁷⁸
).

The day I visited Hursley End was a Monday, which is the day directly
before
refuse is collected in the village. I decided – God only knows why, it was just a random urge, I suppose – to peek inside her dustbin (literally deafened as I did so by the hysterical barks and howls of her four frantic German shepherds). By my calculation, I estimated that there would
need to be
at least
forty-two dog faeces – from her own four animals – stored away inside there.
⁷⁹
In addition to these I also envisaged a
considerable
number of stools collected from her nightly hikes on the ‘filthy’ moor.
⁸⁰