Bendigo by-laws require anyone walking a dog to have a plastic bag about their person. For an hour’s walk I need four bags in my pocket. The lad has Crap One almost immediately we leave the property: dogs adhere strictly to the principle that one should never crap in one’s own backyard. That’s one bag.
Crap One is the plug, fairly solid and of moderate girth, your typical barker’s eggs. Crap Two is what happens when the plug is removed; less solid, less bulbous, more like something extruded from a sausage maker, not easy to pick up. Bag Two.
On most days I hang on to the first bag, knowing I’ll soon complement it with the second deposit. If the second evacuation is delayed, wondering miles with a thin plastic bag of excrement—hot, squidgy and smelly—in one’s free hand follows.
The search for a bin in which to deposit the offending material is the dog-walker’s final tribulation. I know every public bin in a goodly radius of home. Some are private bins just inside front fence lines. Garbage days are godsends.
Shit happens not only to dogs. Human shit happens too and it can’t be dropped urgently on the pavement then scooped deftly into a bag. Human shit is notoriously unpredictable and has no timetable. The body’s capacity to retain shit for the time required to find a toilet diminishes with age. If caught short, you’re in deep doo-doo. The intestinal fortitude required to reach safety is not always forthcoming.
A barrister I shared a room with once told me that after 50 a bloke should never trust a fart, never pass a toilet, and never ignore an erection.
Hence, I don’t dare to leave home without having a dump. Some mornings the JRT implores me for a walk. I point my sphincter at the porcelain but nothing happens. I know that 500 metres from home my gastrointestinal tract will activate.
This morning we’re in a bushland reserve that has a toilet block that also houses a cleaner’s store and a windowless office for visiting park staff. The toilet is usually open but today the door is padlocked. If the female toilet is open, I will use it. Who could be in there at just after seven on chilly morning?
But here’s a miracle: the office is open and a park ranger is within. She has a pert bum despite her ranger’s dungarees. I alert her with a small cough and ask if she has a key to the toilet. Her key opens the padlock. She says she is pleased, but not half as pleased as I am, I tell her.
I drag a reluctant JRT into the cubicle and urgently bestride the metal bowl. Wisely I carry my own paper supply. I flush. The water rises steadily, then rapidly. The dog and I leap out of the cubicle as it surges over the rim. Instantly it’s an inch deep on the concrete but my stool remains poised on the lip of the bowl.
I report a blocked toilet to her of the pert bum and decamp quickly. For once the JRT seems to understand how things are this morning and spares me the trouble of Bag Three. Small mercies.
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