One of the facts about French life I wish What the Fuck France had made a show about was dog poop, but not for the usual reasons.
Toulouse has installed poop bag distributors around residential neighborhoods, and people have started using them. Almost.
I regularly see little tied bags set on the curb, as in the dog pooped, the owner put it in a big, closed the bag, and set the bag back down where the dog had pooped. If the bags are in the gutter, occasionally they're run over and flattened.
Several months ago an older man was walking his dog on campus and let his dog poop on a grassy area under some office windows. He started to move on, but I accosted him about picking up after his dog. "Mais la pluie va s'en occuper," he offered as an excuse, to which I pointed out that 1) his dog had pooped under an outcropping of the building which thus never gets rained on and 2) no matter where his dog poops, it's still the owner's responsibility. I didn't leave until he took a bag out of his pocket and cleaned up after this dog.
And then today on my way home I passed a woman who was pulling out a chain of attached bags and looked to be emptying the entire roll available in the distributor. I couldn't help not make a comment, so I said as I passed "Dommage pour les autres maîtres de chiens." To which the woman replied "Je suis maitresse d'un chien!"as though the Mairie put those bags there just for her to take as many as she wanted.
But seriously, what the fuck france! Who does that?
3 comments:
I'm often amazed to see French "taking advantage" of stuff given away for a reason. Like, the plastic bags. Seriously, they are PLASTIC BAGS, not gold. Take what you need, one, maybe two, and that's it. Why do so many French feel they have to hoard stuff??? Canadians are remarkably well-behaved about that. Like, no one will steal the free newspapers in coffee shops, etc.
When we lived in Lille, we had those bag distributors. We often filled our pockets with quite a few each time as there was never any guarantee that our dogs would go anywhere near them. It made sense to "stock up" a bit as they were often empty... not by people hoarding bags (most people didn't bother to use them and our sidewalks were covered with dog crap), but by children playing with them or pulling them out and putting holes in them for fun (the Roma children did this A LOT). So I get why people would take a bunch at a time. Here in Lyon, no free bags. Luckily, Amazon has poop bags on their subscription service so we'll never be without!
Why would people bag the poop and leave it?? Just carry it to the trash...
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