I filled my coat pockets with trash bags, hooked Jasmine to her leash and decided to spend Monday's spring-like weather outside, picking up after Nasty Litterbugs. What trait in a person causes them to roll down a window of their fast moving auto and fling whatever they will to the ditch and drive off oblivious of their pigginess? How can they drive back by the next day (assuming this is not someone from away driving by, one time only?) and not notice the mounting trash heaps on the side of the road . . . knowing they contributed to the mess . . . and NOT feel guilt?
I don't understand it. I'm not willing to ignore it. Especially the stuff on OUR property. Since we live on a corner, 20+ acres gives us quite a bit of road frontage to clean up. It used to be I could convince the kids, both mine and the babysitting variety, that picking up trash was an Earth Day Event and I had willing helpers. Today it's just me and the dog!
Starting at the mailbox, we headed down to the corner. By the time we reached the stop sign Jazz was giving me the "This is NOT fun" look and I had decided it was too much effort to try picking up all of the mess and still keep her safely leashed. After filling one bag, dragging a broken trash barrel in our ditch back to the neighbors side of the road, so the trash truck would collect it on Tuesday, Jasmine got put inside and I continued up the other road by myself.
In an hour and a half and just a few 10th's of a mile, I filled 4 bags. FOUR HEAPING BAGS. Every driver of every passing car was glared at and if they could read lips at 50+ mph they know I was curious if any of this crap was theirs. It occurred to me as the last bag was filled, right at our farthest boundary and turned to trek home: I needed to rethink future plans to do this ONLY on trash day. I could drop off bags at driveways already boasting: it's trash day. I faced the folly of my plan as I realized I would be lugging 4 full bags of trash 5 miles back home. (Yeah, well a few 10th's seems like 5 miles when 4 bags of disgusting trash are being dragged back to my mailbox!) The found Walmart bag now holding about 75 cents worth of returnables did not seem payment enough. I'm hoping the spotless landscape next time I drive to town will be as satisfying as I remember it in years past.
And WAR? That's now on with our neighbor in the trailer behind our house. By the time I got all of the bags of trash down to the road, where it will be picked up and hauled away, the broken trash barrel was thrown back into the ditch on MY side of the road.
I dragged it out, spouting several loud expletive deletives and dragged it to the pile of roadside crap I had built. CURSE THEM! When I looked out later to see they had brought out their trash for tomorrow's pick up, it had tipped over. I swear . . . not me who tipped it over!
Some neighbors SUCK.
1 comment:
Yeah, well if one those poopy diapers someone threw right beneath their mailbox (frozen into the ground next to the broken trash barrel - and once I realized what I nearly touched, decided to leave right where it was!) suddenly finds it's way into a newspaper box ... well I just wonder WHO would have done that?
Slick.
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