Christopher Stocks
Island Life
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Tread softly because you tread… eeurgh
Some friends of ours came to visit a while back and were amazed (if that’s the right word) by the remarkable amount of dog crap that decorates the paths and pavements of Portland. In fact they found the number of these foul faecal heaps – piled, smeared, spattered, splurged, carefully bagged then casually flung – so overwhelming that by the time they left they had a new name for Portland: Turd Island.
Now, Portland certainly has plenty of dogs, but the odd thing is that all the dog-owners I see always seem to pick up their pooches’ poo and take it away with them. So where does this surfeit of shit come from?
Some, no doubt, from the occasional dog you see snuffling around without any sign of its owner, but most of it must be left by dog-walkers who sneak out so early in the morning, or late in the evening that no one else catches them at it – which at least suggests they know that what they’re doing is pretty foul and antisocial. Which begs the question, why?
How right you are: our guano-spattered isle is becoming overlaid. At least dogs do not discharge on our cars, as seagulls do. On Tophill at least a feature of the new onslaught is how much of it is bagged and sweltering, its afterlife infinitely extended. A shaming strategy is called for – a stirring called to arms in the FPN, perhaps, in rhyming couplets of lines of grossly unequal length?