No, Virginia, there isn't a Poop Fairy

Deer fight pumpkins, not your trash.

In my last post, I mentioned how depressing it is seeing trash along trails in the woods near here. Today, I'd like to address a particular kind of trash: those little plastic dog poop bags. Go for a walk or ride in any public trails, and you're absolutely guaranteed to see them. Not hundreds; but not just one or two, either. The question is: where do they come from? Maybe it's more specifically WHO do they come from, because the trees and animals aren't making them like seeds, the dogs aren't using them, and that leaves only dog owners. They're not completely selfish. They clearly have some notion that it might be incredibly entitled of them to simply let their dog leave waste wide open in a public place. They take the extra step of picking up said waste in a little plastic bag. THEN THEY LEAVE IT THERE. Why? What could possibly explain the proliferation of these things in our public spaces? Do they leave them where they've done the cleaning up, CERTAIN that they'll remember the bag when they leave? That might explain one or two, but the problem involves far more people than that. Do they think they're leaving a less disgusting package (than open waste) for the park employees to clean up? I guess that could be argued. It's certainly better than someone else having to clean up after your dog. Or do they believe a mystical "someone else" will come along and clean up after them? A magical pixie that flies from place to place collecting bags that good little boys and girls have left in the woods, like some bizarrly twisted combination of Santa and the tooth fairy?("She knows when it's been pooping- he sees when you clean up...") Bad news, everyone- that entity doesn't exist. So I'm afraid we're back to square one. If you choose to have a dog, and you choose to take it into shared places and it poops there, then you're going to have to clean up after it. The whole way. The sad thing is that the people doing this probably imagine they're doing something good. But by wrapping the waste in plastic, they've simply insured that instead of it decomposing in about two months, according to one source on the internet, it will be encased in a little plastic shell that lasts 1,000 years in a landfill. That's obviously a whole different issue that we won't get into here, but suffice to say that you're not doing the environment any favors bagging your dogs droppings.