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Written by Karen D. Swim
Animals are quite fond of my neighborhood. Cranes, ducks, geese, squirrels, deer and others happily share space here. The geese however are by far the rudest of our wonderful little animal kingdom. In addition to their incessant barking in the early morning (it’s like living with roosters!) they are quite territorial and not afraid to attack. I have argued with them to get off my car, yelled at them to quit chasing my sister around a tree (even funnier because she is not very good at moving fast!) and pretended I was going to run them over to get them out of the road.
However the worst thing about the geese are the big honking piles of poop they leave everywhere. Sometimes they seem to go away and all is peaceful. Perhaps they’re off visiting their feathered friends in Canada. Yesterday there was no sign of the geese but there was evidence they’d been there. After navigating my way through piles (which means zig zagging and jumping in heels where there was no room to zag) of poop I realized that I could keep jumping over crap or simply move to a different part of the road.
Isn’t life kind of like that some days? The poop in your path can be obnoxious colleagues or clients, nastygrams sent via email, corporate politics or just people with bad attitudes. You could duck, dodge and jump over it or you could just choose a new path that is poop free. Which will you choose to do today?
t.sterling says
I couldn’t resist reading a blog with the word “poop” in it, only to find that the theme of said post is all about it.
Anyway, I can relate to such experiences when I visit my favorite local park. It has a high concentration of ducks, which I’ve come to terms with over the years (I once had a strong hatred for that particular fowl due to an art project), but the geese at the park are another story. You are right, they can be downright vicious nasty creatures that don’t care who you are–wherever they are is their turf and you better deal with it.
Unfortunately, with both the ducks and geese, it’s hard to say who is leaving the park pathway so… colorful. It’s the part of the park I dread, but I must go through it if I want to get back to my car.
As for figurative poop in my life… Don’t we all? I can’t think of specifics other than using the word as a playful TV-friendly synonym to a more popular term. I can be quoted as calling my car for being a poop. Poop stinks and is useless, so when my car, or a friend, isn’t acting right… the word applies.
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Karen Swim says
@Jaden, ROFL! That is one way of managing, eh! Kind of like poker, I’ll see your poop and raise you a scoop! LOL! When dealing with poopy people sometimes pooping back makes them go back and do the scooping. *giggle*
Jaden @ SfH says
Today, I choose to poop on top of the poop. I guess that is not so nice because the next person that comes along has to deal with two poops. Maybe next time, I will scoop the poop so the next person won’t know there was any poop at all, and at least one of the three can have a nice day.
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Melissa Donovan says
I know! We could clean it up. Is that an option? I guess sometimes it’s not, so making a new path would be my choice 😉 Days like that are a big old drag but sometimes I try to turn it into a fun challenge. If it’s a contest between me and the poop, well I am definitely going to win. Hehehe.
Ulla Hennig says
I sometimes wish dog poop would have a nice, shiny colour (neon-yellow, for example), so that at night I would know where to set my feet. Without that I just try to hop over every dark shade that comes along, poop or not…
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Alex Fayle says
Depending on my mood, I’d one of two things – if I was feeling rushed, I’d cross the road, but if I was more relaxed, I’d turn it into a game finding clear spots to step, doing a kind of dance through the labyrinth of goose poop.
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Karen Swim says
@Meryl, Bwahahahaha 🙂 Stumble in it,too pooped to care. ROFL! I wish I had known poop was so funny, I would have tackled it long ago! LOL!
@Shannon, so you are kind of a pooper scooper? LOL! I love the mirror idea. Hmm, gives new meaning to the expression “silly goose.”
@E, I don’t live on the lake but we have a body of water here, which initially I thought was weird. I did know about the imprinting which is why some steal their eggs, but I can’t do that! I know that as much as I find them a nuisance, they’re part of the natural world, I can’t have the planet to myself so it means getting along with the animals – all of them. 🙂 I never really thought about it not smelling. Ya know that’s a good thing, poop that doesn’t stink! Growing up there was an expression when you were acting like a little snot, older people would say (older women): “Oh so you think your poop doesn’t stink”, except they didn’t use the word poop! 🙂
Ellen Wilson says
Karen,
You must live on the lake and have a field nearby for the cranes.
When I worked for MDNR we used to gather all the “nuisance” geese up for the unhappy water front homeowners and transport them somewhere else. The trouble is geese imprint on a body of water so they always come back to the same one.
Make sure your neighbors don’t feed the geese.
Goose poop is the worst. Slimey green stuff. Yuck! I hate it when I get it on my shoe! At least it doesn’t stink.
Rebecca Smith says
A poop post? Always a crowd favorite!
My husband and I walk our dog twice a day, and we are vigilant about picking up her poop. However, there are those dog walkers in our neighborhood who do not think they have to play by the rules. These walkers leave poop on the sidewalk for the rest of us picker-uppers to slog through.
What’s the moral of the story?
A pessimist would say, “Don’t bother doing the right thing because you’ll end up with poop on your shoe no matter what.”
An optimist (like me) says, “Always do the right thing. Karma is a bitch, and there’s a big pile of doo-doo waiting for the non-picker-uppers when they least expect it. Hopefully when they’re dressed up and running late for a meeting.”
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Shannon Paul says
Goose poop, eh? I find that many geese are usually very enamored with their own reflection. There’s a couple that stand around outside our building all the time, gazing at their own reflection (the building has a mirrored exterior). Sometimes, I think they truly believe they’ve found a friend, because they seem rather friendly.
Anyway, maybe you should just hang a big mirror somewhere away from your car, or design a goose-shaped scarecrow they can call friend.
Sorry for being so literal… but some days, it’s all I can do to keep from picking up the poop in my road and flinging it.
Thanks, Karen — good times!
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Meryl K. Evans says
Great analogy of life! And some days we simply stumble and step in the middle of it. Sometimes we’re just pooped out or too pooped to care. Other times we hit the poop deck.
OK, I’ll shut up already 🙂
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Karen Swim says
@Robert, ROFL! Poor Britney, she can’t catch a break!
@Karen,*sigh* How do I get myself into these messes? Oh golly there it is again. LOL! If your parents come up with any good humane tricks, I’m all ears! 🙂
Karen Putz says
I came over here thanks to Robert and I’m reading this at stoplights. Queen of Poop, you know we are going to tease you forever on this one!
My parents have a daily struggle to keep the geese away on their lake because the poop ends up everywhere — on the boats, chairs, etc. heaven forbid if you’re enjoying a drink when a mass of them fly overhead!
Robert Hruzek says
This is too good not to share…
I took Wendi’s suggestion and Googled Queen of Poop – and the very first link is to Britney Spears!
Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! 😀
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Karen Swim says
@Wendi, I laughed so hard I cried! OMG, I am the Queen of Poop, that is hysterical! Goose-Dog? I wonder if they’re still around, we could use them! I love your suggestion Wendi, of getting to the root. I am like that with health things, won’t take an aspirin for a headache because I want to fix the source of the headache. But sometimes, poop is poop and as you say we must cross over to the other side of the road and not look back! 🙂
Wendi Kelly- Life's Little Inspirations says
Oh Karen,
Now you are going to be the site that comes up when someone googles POOP. Queen Karen…queen of goose poop. I’m not sure what you were thinking…:) hahahahaha
OK, on to the question.
Where I used to work in cubicle land, the geese were such an issue that they hired this man and his dog who were actually a company called the Goose Dog. He would come around about once every few weeks with this amazing dog that looked like a cross between a Duck-Toller Retriever and a Border Collie and he would turn that dog loose on those geese. That dog would go nuts chasing those things on land and in water until they couldn’t take it anymore and would fly away and stay away for at least a couple of weeks before some dumb goose would forget about the dog and it would come back. It was really cool.
And I would think, that is the most like my personality. I don’t want to step around, ignore or jump over things in life. I want to get to the root of the problem, or the source of the challenge and fix it. I have gotten too old to settle. Now, that being said, sometimes you still have to choose your battles and if it’s not a battle worth fighting for, I’m crossing to the other side of the road and never looking back.
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Karen Swim says
@Robert, LOL! Poop-proof boots, hehehehe, now that is a good one! When I moved here from CA I was initially excited about the geese but then realized I traded pigeon poop for geese poop! Talk about stepping out of one pile and into another! LOL!
@Steph, I like your suggestion and choosing another path definitely is the choice to change your mindset. *Giggle* this is the liveliest discussion I have ever had about poop. lol!
@ Brad, we have tried to relocate them but they just keep coming back! Let the poop roll off – lol!
Brad Shorr says
Well, in the old days, you could just shoot the geese, but they don’t allow that anymore. I find the best approach is to let the poop roll off your shoulders (so to speak) and just keep going.
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Steph says
Karen,
This is hilarious! But you ask a good question. I’d be the one less likely to try to live with it, to struggle with the crappiness (pardon the pun!) all the time. So I’d be more inclined to move…but to me that means, I’d choose to think of it differently.
It’s all in how we choose to interpret things that makes us a more positive or negative person. It’s not easy, but if I can put a different spin on things that plague me, if I can see them differently, they’re much easier to deal with!
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Robert Hruzek says
Or, you could just wear poop-proof boots! 😀
I remember our stay in Kalamazoo, MI. When the geese migrated through, there wasn’t one square inch of ground that didn’t provide, um, evidence of their presence. It was really disgusting. We’d ride our bikes through the park and were afraid to put our feet down!
Yuk!
You’ve got a point about days like this, though. Sometimes that’s life. All we can do is what we did – keep pedaling!
(Now that I’ve written that, I’m obviously going to have to turn it into an entire post now. Thanks for the prompt, Karen! 🙂 )
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