[Motherload]

Yesterday while visiting my granny she asked me if I would get Mr. Load to come over and look at her toilet in the front bathroom because it was leaking. So tonight when he got home from work we went over there so he could check it out.

After a quick examination he determined that the innards of the tank are simply old and worn out. The gaskets are starting to crumble and the water is just seeping out under the tank or something. I just take his word for it that it’s no big deal. He said that he would stop at Lowes on the way home tomorrow and pick up a new assembly and get her fixed right up. So that’s the end of that. We went into the living room to sit and talk with her for a bit.

Now usually when I visit with Nanny, its just the two of us and it is not uncommon—in fact it is quite ordinary—for our conversations to include pooping, the lack of pooping or some complication thereof. But since I had my other half with me tonight and they are still quite formal with one another due to not really having had much interaction, I assumed that there would be no talk of that. But I was wrong. Poop did manage to become the subject of conversation, but not hers. This time it was dog poop that would become the hot topic of the hour.

She began by telling us about a new dog in the neighborhood that has decided that the best place to put a steaming pile of poo is on the edge of the lawn just off her front porch. There are landscaping rocks, flowerbeds and bushes that make maneuvering for an 88 year old woman difficult at best, and the consistency of these quart-size piles is like soft serve ice cream. She said she has to wait several days to clean up a pile so it can “firm up some” before she is able to successfully scoop it out of the rocks without too much mess.

She said that every time she scoops up a pile she remembers something that her sister-n-law had done many years ago in Florida. As I listened to her telling us this story, it became clear to me that I am a poop reporter by blood. And I am also related to (by marriage) a turd terrorist.

Nanny’s brother was burned very badly from the waist down in a gasoline fire when he was seventeen, and this resulted in his legs becoming drawn up, twisted and unusable. But he was not a cripple. He walked with his hands for the rest of his life. He would sit Indian style, put his hands down on the floor on each side and lift his butt off the ground and “swing” himself forward. He developed such strength in his arms and upper body that he was able to climb up onto things and got around so well that he made a living as a mechanic. He lived his life like a normal person. The only difference was the way he walked.

He married a woman named Grace. They moved to Florida after he retired from his job. The people that lived next door to them had a great dane. The dog would deposit massive piles of poop in my great uncle’s yard that Aunt Grace had to clean up.

One day she went over to the neighbors’ house and very politely explained to them about the unique way that her husband had to get around, and how unpleasant it was for him to have to put up with cow-pile-like heaps of feces on the walkway where his hands had to go. She asked them to please not allow their dog to do its business on their property.

After a few weeks of still having to scoop the dog’s nasty poops up from their walkway, they were on their way home from dinner one night and pulled in the driveway just in time to see the big dog being let out of the house next door. It meandered around in his own yard for a few minutes, peeing on a bush here and there, then marched right over onto my uncle’s lawn and shat out a big pile right on the sidewalk.

Well, this was the breaking point for my aunt. She got out of the car, walked over to the porch and picked up her pooper-scooper, walked out to the fresh pile, scooped it up and walked over to the neighbor’s yard. The dog was back inside the screened-in porch of his masters’ home, and the dog’s owners were sitting in their wicker chairs there out on the porch enjoying the nice Florida summer evening.

She simply said “I think this belongs to you”, and with a flick of her wrist sent the stinky pile of poo from the scooper splattering right through the screen onto the dog, furniture and people.

According to Nanny, nobody said a word. My aunt just casually walked back to her house and went inside. There was never another pile of poop from that great dane on my great uncle’s lawn again.

So getting back to the original point of my grandma’s story, she said that in order to restore peace to her relationship with her own neighbor with this current dog situation, she might have to give them a little dose of Grace. I just smiled.

[daphne]

Holy crap! I thought she might fling the poop into their yard, but their fenced-in porch? Wow. I bet there are thousands of people in this country who fantasize about doing this to the lackadaisical dog owners in their neighborhood.

If your gramma knows who owns the dog, maybe your man could take some of the poop back to their house and either give them the bag or fling it on their lawn. We had neighbors for one year who would let their English Mastiff poop on our yard. I would chuck it onto their driveway and watch it splat like a fecal Rorschach test across the pavement if they didn't pick it up and always felt satisfied as hell doing so. How nasty, to leave the shit of one of your animals on someone else's property, where they live and spend their lives.

[robocrap13]

I knew someone who designed a small catapult for a college physics class.
This would be perfect for you if you could slow the launch speed.

[prarie doggin]

A large Y-shaped stick and a thong work quite well.

[Bilgepump]

or a bra....double barreled slingshot.

[Hum bunger]

Motherload, it would be hilarious if your Grandmother did use the "Grace" option. After a certain age senior citizens have an air of respectability that places them above the social norms applicable to others. Really, what could her neighbors do if an 88 year old woman came over and flung their own dog's poo back at them? Were a younger individual to do that it would incur the neighbor's wrath, but her? No way would it be acceptable for them to yell or scream at an old lady.

If I did something like that to my neighbors they would retaliate or call the police. In this way your grandmother is invincible, say she got fed up and gave the dog's owners a taste of their own medicine. Even if the police were called they would empathize for granny and lecture the dog owners, at the most she would be asked kindly not to do it again, either way the shit culprits would be put on notice.

[prarie doggin]

Hum bunger, I agree with you 100%. This has been a part of my retirement planning portfolio for quite some time now.

[robocrap13]

How about a water balloon filled with re-hydrated, de-hydrated meadow muffin?
Or maybe a poo-tato cannon? (Be careful with the methane fumes!)
Or the flaming bag of dog-poo? (Gotta recycle to save the future!)

[shitwit]

I used to round up our psycho neighbor's cat's crap that always found its way into our garden and deliver it to her property. I used to get all creative about where to place it. The first re-gifting was turds on the doorstep; cute but very cliche. Next I tried "tootsie rolls" on the windshield wipers on a hot summer day - that's when the fun began! She wasted a whole tank of washer fluid trying to get that shit off her windshield (it also helped that she left the windows open and I turned the wipers on while the car was off). Another time I horded a bunch of kitty crap from her "free-spirited" cats and stuffed it all up the tailpipe of that same car - yeah, I was all Beverly HIlls Cop about that one! We tried to just plant them in her garden like her cats did in ours, but she didn't seem to notice them. But the best one was this time: she called my father over to help fix her screen door when she got pissed off at me and slammed the door (I wasn't even in her yard, I was just running a chainsaw at 6am ... to piss her off). When he was about to go across the road I told him to wait - I had something to give her. I ran out to the garden and found the most recent presents from her cats and put them all in a canning jar with some pickling spices and then poured vinegar in the jar and clamped it shut. I labeled it "dirt pickles - summer 1993". I decorated the top with some fabric and ribbons and put the "recipe" on an index card and looped the ribbons thru a hole I punched in the card. It just wreaked of country charm! My dad is kinda clueless and didn't pick up on what I was attempting to do, so he cheerfully walked across the road with my gift to our nutcase neighbor and greeted her with the nicely wrapped jar. She brought it inside and I don't think she really examined it for a few days. Or else it just took the town cop that long to show up at my house and ask if I knew anything about the "dirt pickles". She was notorious in our town for being a complete wacko. So many times the cops would rush to her home responding to a 911 hang-up, then she'd deny it, and shoo them away. On this day the police chief was about to chalk it up to her just being a dipshit hippie, but I had already told my parents what I did and they both howled with laughter when the cop asked us about it. He even laughed and said "nice job.... illegal as all hell..... but very nice". He went to her house afterwards and told her to just throw it in the trash and stop calling him about stupid shit. Can you believe that dumbass actually cleaned out the jar and used it for food?! Man, it's been a long time since I dealt with her bullshit, but oh the stories we can tell about that woman!

[daphne]

or a bra....double barreled slingshot.

The engineering students who lived across the quad from us my freshman year in college used a Cross Your Heart bra, some crazy large size, doubled over with one cup stuffed into the other one. It held a water balloon perfectly, unfortunately for us.