The Disappearing Dog Waste Station
At first I thought it was an old-school mailbox, sturdy and peak-roofed, mounted on a thick post stuck in the ground on the edge of the Long Meadow in Prospect Park, not far from the Garfield Place entrance to the park, through which George and I usually pass at the start of our morning constitutional.
Then I wondered why there would be a mailbox on the edge of the Long Meadow in Prospect Park, not far from the Garfield Place entrance, etc.
Then I noticed that the long blue streamer flying from a hole above the mail slot was a length of plastic doggy bags, and the mail slot was not a slot at all, rather a hinged flap opening inward.
The dog waste station offered free bags and a place to put them after use, a useful convenience for bagless dog people or those too dim to realize the nearby garbage can also accepts properly packaged dog waste, and even that which is not. I have never met such dog people, but I’m sure they exist.
Less than a week after I first noticed it, the dog waste station is gone, leaving only a hole in the dry earth. Did somebody steal it? Who would want to steal a dog waste station? Even considering its camp value? Or was the removal order from the highest reaches of the Prospect Park bureaucracy, a tacit acknowledgment by the responsible parties of the dog waste station’s stupendous ugliness?
One doesn’t expect one will ever know.