This One's About Poop

We share a front porch with the people downstairs. Our front doors sit side by side and there are shared steps that lead down our front yard to the sidewalk and street. We (as in the upstairs people) like to refer to this front porch/step area as "the stoop." Our duplex sits on a relatively busy road about a block off of a very heavily-trafficked lake. We enjoy sitting on the stoop on late summer evenings, sipping on a beer and/or gluten-free cider and watching rich people drive by. We also like to use our stoop for things like entering and exiting our apartment. Never having lived in a neighborhood where it was technically considered "safe" to sit in front of your house after the sun sets, it is definitely an understatement to say that we really enjoyed hanging out on the stoop during the first couple of weeks of our move.

Then came the shit. Literally.


First, part of Girlfriend's morning routine consists of letting their dog out in the backyard before she goes to work. The backyard is basically a driveway, 2 paved parking spaces, and a grassy area the size of a postage stamp. The dog takes a crap on the grass and then goes and licks the grease on the grill until Girlfriend calls it back inside. Girlfriend never picks up the shit. To reiterate, the downstairs dog is extremely obese and could stand to take a couple of walks. Or at least stand to NOT lick grease each morning. Unfortunately, there are no morning walks. Ever.

There are also no afternoon walks. Guy appears to be responsible for the dog's welfare in the afternoon/evening. He will tie it to a leash connected to the front porch and let it wander and crap in the front yard as he smokes his cigarettes. Guy thereafter does the most remarkable thing: he picks up the dog shit in a bag and ties it shut. After exerting such uncharacteristic effort, he then places the bag of shit underneath the wicker rocking chair on our front porch instead of walking the extra 30 feet to the back of the house to throw it away. It's like he's collecting them or something (for hoarder theory, see previous post)! After a couple weeks of basking in the glory that is our stoop, we started noticing that there was a collection of poop bags under the wicker chair. We didn't think much of it at first (besides that it was kind of weird and gross), but then the bags started to duplicate in number. There were weeks where there would be 8-10 bags of old dog shit on our front step. I know this because the wicker chair is pretty small and you can only "hide" so many of those bags under the chair before they spill out onto the porch. So, in summary, our backyard is covered in crap and our front yard is covered in small bags of crap. 

We don't even care about the backyard anymore. We have even generally gotten used to this bagged-shit phenomenon. It's gross and annoying but it is also a literal metaphor for how we feel about the people downstairs (get it? they are bags of shit!). But of course, as soon as we come to terms with their latest egregious act of inconsideration, they go and one-up themselves. For an entire week last week, Guy left an opened bag of dog shit sitting on the seat of the wicker chair, in plain view, the opening of the bag flapping in the wind. What's next? Their dog just straight up shits on our front porch and they don't even bag it? Oh wait... I haven't posted about that yet.