Monday, July 22, 2013

Who Was That Helmeted Man?


I was sitting on a park bench, engrossed in Nissim's Taleb's new book Antifragile, when I detected a new aroma. I lifted my head and saw a woman and her dog walking away. On the ground, five feet from where I was reading, sat a fresh pile of dog crap, glistening in the late morning sun. Moving to another bench wasn't an option. Shaded park benches with free WiFi connections are a rare find in Cannes, and it was going to take a lot more than olfactory assault to dislodge me.
 
Despite the signs, free plastic bags and special poop receptacles, French dog owners seldom clean up their dog's residue, nor do they make any attempt to take their dogs away from heavily trafficked pedestrian paths to do their business. Hundreds of dog owners walk their animals along the crowded Rue de Antibes, Cannes's densest shopping street, without making any effort to curb their animals, often allowing them to urinate on the door jam at a store's entrance. This may be one of the reasons why the French buy so much perfume. 

As if it wasn't already hard enough to stay focused on Taleb's discussion of hidden convexity bias while slowly being asphyxiated, one of those annoying scooters that litter the country pulled alongside the offending pile. The driver revved the bike's whinny engine. At least the exhaust masked the previous stench; it was probably less noxious too. My immediate concern was that the rider was planning to use the excrement as a tire lubricant for a spin out. I looked him in the eye. He glared back at me, not a menacing stare, just a stern, serious expression. As we locked eyes he withdrew one of two long silver cylinders from a holster on the back of his bike, jammed it into the putrid pile and vacuumed the mess away. I smiled. He acknowledged my appreciation with a slight a nod of his head and then sped away on his scooter powered pooper scooper, a French Lone Ranger, sans Tonto, keeping Gallic streets safe for locals and tourists.



7 comments:

  1. That's got to be a shitty job! (sorry)

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    1. I was thinking that the job sucks.

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  2. I recently read that 600 Parisians go to the hospital every year from injuries resulting from slipping on dog poo. I've been to Paris several times and they do not under any circumstance pick up after their dogs.

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    1. So true, Stephen. The place also seems to be an open urinal. I'm thinking about writing post titled "Urine Paris Now."

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  3. Maybe if I were to get my hands on one of those motorized pooper scoopers, I'd finally be able to get LB to pick up the dog poop in our yard with out dry-heaving.

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  4. The behavior of the French reminded me of my father prior to his conversion to the ranks of the pooper-scoopers. When I challenged him about why he thinks it's ok to let his dog shit on the roadside, he would answer, "It 's ok, the birds will eat it!"

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