THIS COULD GET A LITTLE GROSS--YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Somebody get me this woman on the horn immediately, please. I need my backyard declared a disaster area. The picture to the right does the yard absolutely no justice. In real life, it far, far worse.

I blame Michigan's schizophrenic weather. One day it is 10 degrees and the next day it is 48 degrees with steady rain. The piles of dog poop in the backyard stood not a snowball's chance in Hades of maintaining their integrity, their base solidity.

So why, I wonder, did I choose today of all days to do my Deca-Annual Shit Pick-up?

I don't know. I'm illogical, sometimes.

Actually, I know why I huddled in the drizzle, scooping shit up with a flat steel shovel: the neighbor next door said hello to me and, as I was walking to my side door, called me back and mentioned that little beagle named Uno that won the Westminster Dog Show, said that he had thought of my Oliver. He made me aware of my pooches and so I followed them outside when I let them out. What a fucking disaster!

The backyard is mud, first of all. Nary a blade of grass rears its head in the first half, three-quarters, of the lawn from the side door back to the back fence line. It is mud and it is ice and it is spotted like a leper with smooshy piles of brown and orange and red dog feces. I slapped my head in disgust.

I had become what I had hated when I was a meter reader: I was the guy with the lawn filled with shit. We used to put messages on the handheld computers that would spring up whilst we were walking to the address stating things like "WARNING. DOG FESES [sic]" and "WATCH WHERE U STEP" and "SKIP THIS HOUSE."

I determined to save face and do my ownerly duty. Never mind that it had been since November that I had last half-heartedly plastic-bagged the dog feces. Today, amidst the drizzle and drooping temperatures, I would make amends. I would rid the lawn of the foul-smelling land mines, damn it!

Easier said than done.

Dog shit is organic, obviously, so it is susceptible to the malevolent whims of that bitch, Michigan Mother Nature. Frozen, thawed, frozen, thawed...repeat that cycle a couple score more times and you might get an idea of what the majority of the shit was like. Let me try to put it into words. Hmm.... The majority of the shit was like melted soft serve chocolate ice cream. I'd have been better off using a sponge to pick it up. But I perservered with a plastic baggy around my right--shit-picking--hand. All was gravy (sorry for the word choice) until I got to the back fence. This is the area in which Louie loves to empty his bowels. 'Twas a multi-colored shit carpet, is what it was. And, to add to the drizzly misery, a large bush acted as an offensive lineman to the most egregious piles of shit's runningback. If that makes any sense. Basically, it was a bitch to get to. So I came up with an end-around: I would use the flat shovel to scrape the booty to a place where I could easily scoop it up.

Bad idea.

Here is a fun experiment that you can try at home, kids! Plop some chocolate ice cream on the kitchen floor and mix in some twigs and branches. Then? Let the mess melt until it is a slightly-congealed brown mess with odd angles and protrusions. Then, standing at an awkward angle, try to scrape the stuff--with a big ole flat shovel--into a neat pile. Does it smear? You betcha!

You--sob--betcha.

It was damn-near pudding by the time I had it in an easily-accessible pile. Sticks and twigs and leaves and all. This was proving to be a very bad idea. But I was determined. Determined, I say! So now I had a pile. And behind the pile, I had a thin layer of orangish-brown shit carpet. I thought about just using the shovel to execute an impromptu rototill...but the ground was frozen. So I nixed that idea. I wandered over to the shed in the backyard and found some peat moss. Perfect! Cold and wet, with the acrid smell of dog excrement clinging to the inside of my nostrils, I dumped half the bag of the peat moss onto the stinking "carpet" and I spread it out, artistically, with the back of the shovel. It was--is--beautiful.

I filled up a black garbage bag with the excrement and I still have about another half a bag of droppings still out there to be...un-dropped.

And now my dogs stink because they slid through wet piles of shit. They'll be getting a bath. Posthaste. Just another day of lovely dog ownership, no?

I often have lessons hidden in my 'blog postings. Here is today's lesson: don't be a lazy ass. Pretend that you live outside, that you "pitch a tent" in the backyard every day and every night. Pretend that that big ole tree is your living room TV and pretend that the back fence is your hallway. Pretend that your olfactory sense has not gone AWOL and pretend that you do have a scintilla of pet responsibility and that your neighbors don't like the smell of wet dog shit. If you do all that, I think everyone will be happy. Or at least their nose hairs won't be curling come the spring thaw.

Thanks. That is all.