You never know your luck till you tread in it

IF you thought the internal combustion engine was the curse of modern society, think again.

It’s dog poo.

At least with the internal combustion engine there’s a spin off for the carbon monoxide, the accidents and the hole in your wallet. At least it takes you from A to B.

Not so, dog poo.

Dog poo stinks. It contains bugs that can blind you and parasites that can infest you. It spreads further than creosote on a fence and a little on the bottom of a shoe will follow you around more faithfully than the dog that did it.

Dog poo has no purpose, except for the dogs that do it. And even that is debatable because when they’ve done it it’s of no more value to them. Except for rolling in.

You may think that the internal combustion engine has the edge because there are more of them than dog poo, but not in my street.

The entire dog population of Townsville must line up in my yard and take turns. Other residents in other areas complain of similar experiences. The city’s pets must be on a terrible diet.

We never had this problem 20 years ago, but 20 years ago we weren’t paranoid about burglars and even if we were we thought wee could frighten them off by yelling loudly. Now we have dogs. And dog poo.

And we had space, too. There was room for dogs and their little mistakes on the spare block opposite, or just down the road, and we could pretend it wasn’t happening, or that they didn’t do it, like the Queen.

Now, however, there’s nowhere a dog can go discreetly. We live in streets and near parks that aren’t designed for dogs. If you’ve ever had a child come home from a footy match with skid marks on his kit that aren’t dirt and aren’t his, you’ll know what I mean.

You can always walk the dog out to the wilds of Pallarenda, or up to the High Range, but you’d better have nothing else to do all day.

The only alternative is doggy dunnies, like they have in some parks, with a little bin and a supply of plastic bags.

Personally I do not want to pick up dog poo with my hand sheathed in a plastic bag. And anyway, what happens to it when I’ve chucked it in the bin?

Is there a repository somewhere of plastic bags and their disgusting contents rotting away – no, not rotting away, because they can’t, inside their plastic bags.

And it’s going to grow worse, the more houses we build.

Look at the streets in English towns, where the population is 60 million. On the other hand, perhaps not. It’s not a pretty sight. Walking English streets is an exercise in stomach control. You’d be forgiven for thinking that everyone of the 60 million had a pet that was using the sidewalk as a lavatory. And no matter how fast the victims tread it home to their carpets and the floor mats of their cars, there’s always more tomorrow.

One answer is never to let your dog out. Dog poo, like charity, should begin at home. But not my home.