I’ll be putting these on my hunting pants. I end up on my knees digging little holes.
(here’s a sample of my newspaper column for the Richmond Review as discussed yesterday. I’ll write a few more and submit them all at once. Turns out it’s a monthly, not a weekly paper. That’ll make it three times easier.)
I took the metal detector out this first saturday of April since it was like Eden in the Richmond – no wind and no fog, a rare combination for us. There are four tennis courts within a chain linked square tucked among homes between 30th and 31st Ave. I hit a small patch of grass on the 31st side and immediately dug up a pull top, large enough to remind me of a Dinty Moore soup can. Pull tops, usually from beer cans manufactured in the 1970′s, are a nightmare for hunters. It’s like that decade was a giant outdoor frat party.
Lying mere inches next to that letdown something made my machine scream out in pain…I was directly over the sprinkler head. Dandelions had obscured the iron cap. I swept the metal coil around a few more times and came up with a faint blip. It didn’t take much to find the foil lined ketchup pack at the bottom of the grass. I couldn’t get much more done in that spot, the power lines were directly overhead and that messes with the detectors sensors.
I powered down and decided I’d just poke around in the shrubbery abutting the courts. Treasure hunting comes in many forms…maybe I’d find a whiskey bottle with something still in it. There was nothing out of the ordinary, but if you’re ever looking for tennis balls, here’s a tip: get your brother and a stick and head over to the 31st street side. One goes down the ramp into the court and catches the balls knocked loose from the ledge from the one outside holding the stick. There must have been ten or fifteen good lookin’ ones jammed in there, unreachable from the inside due to the height difference from excavation necessary to flatten the area for tennis. Go check it out, you’ll see what I mean.
Well, I didn’t find anything other than metallic garbage, but it was a nice day. The thud of tennis balls on rackets and the sunshine made me think of my childhood, clicking through the four channels and only finding Wimbledon coverage on tv. I’d go outside and climb trees.
Shaken from my reverie I looked up and noticed a wooden sign. “Dog owners are responsible for picking up their dog’s feces. Health Code Sec 40.” I decided to look that particular bit of legislation up when I got home and see what else it had to say.
SEC. 40. DOG TO BE CONTROLLED SO AS NOT TO COMMIT NUISANCES.
(a) It shall be unlawful for any person owning or having control or custody of any dog to permit the animal to defecate upon the public property of this City or upon the private property of another unless the person immediately remove the feces…yeah yeah yeah…
(b) It shall be unlawful for any person to walk a dog on public property of this City or upon the private property of another without carrying at all times a suitable container or other suitable instrument for the removal and disposal of dog feces.
(c) Visually handicapped persons who use Seeing Eye Guide Dogs are exempt from this law.
(Amended by Ord. 420-78, App. 9/8/78)
Well there it is. I’d never considered the Seeing Eye Guide Dogs before. Good piece of code there, that (c). You can’t expect a blind person to pick up dog feces, for obvious reasons. (b) as well gives food for thought. Perhaps in these leans times officers could be allowed to search dog walkers and those that come up empty handed as far as suitable containers for feces are concerned could be given a ticket. How else is The City going to stay solvent if we don’t explore new avenues of revenue?
I look forward to getting out to another Richmond area park real soon, and this time I’ll remember to avoid the power lines. I hope to have some exciting finds to share with you when we meet again.
