Let’s say you’re a litterer and you’re reading this column. Let me re-phrase that. Let’s say you’re a litterer and somebody is reading this column to you while you sit with a pail at your feet to catch the drool as well as the blood dripping from your knuckles.
Exactly how little respect do you have for the environment, your community, the scenery and your fellow citizens who must walk past your entrails of waste which is a lot like following a patient suffering from debris diarrhea? On the off chance that you were allowed to reproduce — don’t your kids deserve a better role model?
Oh yeah, I hate these people.
On my walk, I pass a beautiful piece of wooded property with an immaculate lawn and the owner, on a sit-down mower, cuts the grass on both sides of a ditch,. Normally it would take this man an hour to mow his lawn except for the ‘abnormal’ among us who add a colourful variety of rubbish to an otherwise lush green carpet. Every ten feet or so he has to stop, get off the mower, pick up the litter, deposit it in a garbage bag, get back on the mower and continue on to the next item of waste. I’ll bet it takes him two hours to cut his lawn which is usually a pleasurable chore. This is wrong. Littering is so wrong it should be a criminal offence that carries a hefty fine of $2,000 and jail time for a second conviction. A meager $150 fine is just the cost of doing business for one of these filth swillers and honestly, I’ve never heard of anyone being charged.
Hopefully this guy never ventures across the road where last week rubbish history was made. Probably inspired by all the dog crap people leave along the nearby Gord Harry Trail, a cat owner pulled over to the side of the road and emptied a litter box of about six pounds of cat poop.
By complaining about but not actually punishing their disgusting habits, we have allowed these lazy slobs to believe every road in this country can double as a roadside dump. Littering is considered a misdemeanour like jaywalking except — and here’s the sad part of it all — litterers stand very little chance of being run down and killed by an oncoming car.
Along the lake in my old neighbourhood residents are dealing with a sudden infestation of rats. Both rats and litter are carriers of disease and parasites. Wouldn’t that be the big irony of animal behaviour? The rats show up to feed on and clean up the litter that the pigs tossed out their car windows.
So by now you’re thinking, Bill really does not like litterers. Honestly, except for animal abusers who also do not face serious punishment in Canada, littering makes me see red. And even after I organize a local clean-up which I do every year, the anger is only escalated by the addition of an aching back and a boggled mind.
There is no excuse for littering but there might be a reason. “Are you kidding me? My wife would kill me if she went through our garbage bag and found four empty cans of beer and a glow-in-the-dark condom! I gotta get rid of the evidence!”
Well, why would your wife have the pleasure of ending your life when you can go online and sign my petition “Litterers Must Be Put To Death”?
These people who enjoy what most animals know enough not to do — crap in their own nests — should have their own support group. Much like AA, Litterers Anonymous would meet on the last Sunday of each month… in the middle of the town dump.
“Hi, my name’s Bob but my friends call me Eddie. I’m a litterer. I enjoy driving in rural areas, helping to turn the countryside into an ashtray. I love despoiling beautiful places even if I don’t know what that word means. I’ve never been caught so I’m thinking about upping my game and getting into shop lifting, vandalism and mugging senior citizens. I’m really nervous right now because I’ve been litter free for almost ten minutes and I’m getting the urge to spit on the floor or urinate in the corner.
Please do not refer to these ‘dross droppers’ as litterbugs. That’s just way too “Smokey the Bear” cute. These people are the dregs of society, social bottom feeders who love to scam the system and make their human waste someone else’s problem.
I can’t bring myself to tell you what I cleaned up on my walk last week except to say I did not pick it up. I couldn’t. So I used a stick to gather it in a pile, threw dried grass over top of it and burned it into ashes. And yes, I had to go home and return with matches. Honestly, I did not want some young couple have to explain to their kids what heinous act some people are capable of when they think nobody is watching.
I realize I sound like a raving lunatic when I call for the death sentence for litterers so I’m going to amend that. In Singapore where you’d be hard-pressed to find a gum wrapper on the street, littering is punished by public caning. A whipping. A lashing. So yeah, let’s adopt that policy here in Canada. First we cane ’em… and then we kill ’em. Dear Litterer: you are what you throw out your car window!
For a comment or a signed copy of The Dog Rules – Damn Near Everything email: williamjthomas@gmail.com
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