You may have to live on The Planet Ann Arbor to know how “speshul” it is. Do not get me wrong. I love it here. But some of the people? And their damn dogs?

There is a leash law here as well as a pick-up-your-poop law. One of the many reasons I don’t have a dog is that I once took a walk with a friend and her BIG dog. She was responsibly carrying poop bags but that dog made a LOT of poop and I can’t remember what we did with the last load of poop because she had run out of bags by that time.

The first year I had no kids in Haisley elementary, I was taking my early morning walk and when I got to the woods, it was PADLOCKED shut. Wait a minute! Can youz guyz do that? I had spent years working on the PTO so I spent a heartbeat thinking, dum de dum de dum, who do I still know on the Haisley PTO. I emailed Jacqui to ask about the padlocks. She asked the principal (not the same principal as I “worked” for) and the reply was “there is science in the woods”. Of course what the principal meant was “we want to be able to take kiddos into the woods to look at flora and fauna and not track dog poop into the school”.

I understand that but… First, I hardly ever see classrooms of kids in the woods behind my house. Second, I believe there are a lot of wild aminals in the woods and they must poop too? Third, my main PTO job was treasurer and when I left that “job”, there was a shit-ton of money hanging around that nobody seemed to want to spend. Maybe they were afraid of meeeee, banker’s daughter that I am, even though I encouraged spending it and probably very few people knew my dad’s occupation. I was thinking that for the amount of money that was in that treasury, the school could buy rain boots for every kid and hoses to clean off their boots before they came back in the building. That would probably be a stoopid solution but padlocking the woods was equally stoopid.

I responded with some of this stuff and the padlocks were removed within days. Thank you Jacqui.

A quote from my old coot: “Don’t go over there. That’s where Sam craps.” “Over there” was a section of the moomincabin yard, which is mostly forested but with spaces carved out for household chores and parking spots. NOT PAVED. SAND COVERED WITH PINE NEEDLES. Sam was my brother’s big rescue dog.

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