I saw this funny trail sign at Calero County Park in San Jose, California. I’ve mentioned this park before because it is home to the famous Bat Hotel.
Calero is a great place to hike, with a wonderful variety of wildlife habitat. I especially love its stately oak woodlands and grass-covered hills. In early spring, wildflowers blanket the hills like exploding fireworks.
Calero also has a 349-acre reservoir. Its riparian habitat hosts a wide variety of birds from plovers to Bald Eagles. But don’t eat the fish! The water is contaminated with methyl mercury from quicksilver mining that began around 1845. The mines are closed now, but the damage to the environment has been done.
The Story Behind the Sign
Like many parks near urban areas, Calero permits dogs on its trails. But this is creating a new kind of pollution problem… and it’s really strange!
To encourage dog owners to clean-up after their pets, the park provides a plastic bag dispenser at trailheads. Owners use them to bag the poop and then drop the bags into trash cans at the trailhead. But the dog owners just leave their bags of poop on the trail!
Why go to the trouble of bagging your dog’s poop just to leave the plastic bags sitting on the trail? I’m no expert in human behavior, but this just seems weird.
It’s now a common sight in parks that permit dogs. Bright blue plastic bags line the trails like unsightly guardrails.
And just who’s supposed to pick up all this poop? Thus, the sign…
Here’s My Take
This is a ruff problem. Parks have tried hounding dog owners. But they won’t roll over. They just drop their bags of poop along the trail. It’s not as if some magician can make them disappear with a simple, “Labracadabrador!”
It makes me feel melan-collie to see lines of blue plastic bags stretching into the distance. But there’s no clear solution. We could photograph the offenders, like puparazzi, in an effort to shame them into good behavior. But this seems far-fetched.
We need to find a way to convince dog owners not to leave their bags of poop on the trail. Quite frankly, it’s disgusting. We already know that dogs on trails alter wildlife behavior. Now we have an unsightly pollution problem, too. Many of us hike to escape the burdens of city life. The last thing we want is to step carefully over bags of dog poop as we hike.
What do you think?
Do you have any suggestions for solving this problem? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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