Trash. I’ve absolutely had my fill of it.
See, I live out in the county on a dirt road. Everyone on my road is responsible for placing garbage in our own cans and rolling them down to a centralized location for the county garbage truck to collect on our garbage day. The route usually brings the garbage truck by early in the morning so all of us tend to take our cans down the night before.
Well, being in the county, nearly everyone on our road has dogs. The dogs either stay in outside kennels or live indoors and are allowed monitored playtime breaks each day. No one allows their pets to just roam freely due to our proximity to prime hunting fields…except one.
See, I’m convinced there will always be that one person who manages to take a good thing and ruin it for everyone.
They do not monitor their dogs like everyone else on our road. They allow their dogs outside in the evenings to freely roam and do as they wish until called back.
Well, while these dogs are not mean natured, they are rather large and rather capable of doing just about anything they set their minds to doing.
Yup… you guessed it, including knocking over full trash containers spreading the contents across the road and fields.
Now, when this first happened, I assumed we had strong straight-line winds come through and tip all the cans over. I would simply stop and set it back upright. Then it happened again. And again. Well, I can’t stand to see trash scattered, so I would go down and personally pick up all the loose trash.
It was on one of these “pickup days” that I finally discovered it was the neighbor’s dogs who were the culprits. So when the neighbor later came outside to see what I was doing out by road picking up after their dog had knocked over all the trash cans, I assumed the issue would be fixed.
I mean if situations were reversed and I saw my neighbor picking up the entire road’s collective garbage after my dog had made the mess, you can bet your bottom dollar I would not allow my dog the same freedom and I would be down there helping pick up.
See, now that is called taking ownership.
But my neighbor didn’t catch on.
There is still trash caused by irresponsible pet owners who aren’t taking ownership of being a pet owner or of being a responsible steward of the land.
But the truth is the trash problem isn’t relegated to my little dirt road. It’s everywhere. Ride down just about every county road or city street and there is evidence of people who lack impulse control to not throw garbage out the window.
This needs to stop. We as pay for garbage removal in Tate County. We pay for garbage removal in Senatobia and in Coldwater. Why on earth do people still insist on simply tossing it on sidewalks or on the sides of roads?
The annual Rotary Clean Up day will be coming up soon in the spring. I encourage everyone to participate.
In fact, I might hand a flyer to my neighbor, but I feel like I’ll just be picking it up from our road when trash day comes again.
